Rig Explosion off of LA. Coast

[Jolie Rouge]

Deepwater Horizon BP Gulf Coast Oil Spill

At least 11 workers sought after oil rig explosion
By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer 41 mins ago


http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Deepwater-Horizon-Transocean-Coast-Guard/photo//100421/480/urn_publicid_ap_org0511dceaab2e4f4692b843817a713fb e//s:/ap/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion;_ylt=Akq42UaVXI2Bj2 6f4wQ5isZv24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTE5NDIydDdyBHBvcwMxBHNlYw N5bl9yX3RvcF9waG90bwRzbGsDZmlsZS1pbnRoaXN1
Ultra-deepwater semi-submersible rig
FILE - In this undated file photo released by Transocean, the ultra-deepwater semi-submersible rig Deepwater Horizon is shown operating in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Authorities were searching for missing workers early Wednesday April 21, 2010 who evacuated after an explosion at the oil drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana. The explosion happened around 10 p.m. Tuesday, 52 miles southeast of Venice, La., while 126 workers were aboard the platform, Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said


NEW ORLEANS – At least 11 people were missing and seven injured after an explosion and fire at an oil drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

Most of the 126 people were believed to have escaped safely after the explosion at about 10 p.m. Tuesday, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said. It happened about 52 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip.

The rig was still burning Wednesday morning and was listing about 10 degrees, O'Berry said.

"It's burning pretty good and there's no estimate on when the fire will be put out," O'Berry said.

O'Berry said there were conflicting reports coming in but at least 11 — and possibly as many as 15 — were missing.

"We're hoping everyone's in a life raft," he said.

Seven workers were airlifted to a Naval air station near New Orleans, then taken to hospitals. He said two of the seven were taken to a trauma center in Mobile, Ala., where there is a burn unit.

O'Berry said many workers who escaped the rig were being brought to land on a workboat while authorities searched the Gulf of Mexico for any signs of lifeboats.

The rig was drilling but was not in production, according to Greg Panegos, spokesman for its owner, Transocean Ltd., in Houston. The rig was under contract to BP

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion/print;_ylt=AmSNS_Pdq5XYVPk8Y_0qmExv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[gmyers]

I hope they find them alive and well.

[shadowcats]

I hope they find them alive and well.

my dad used to work on that rig when he was alive,,,,,,and if it had an explosion that bad , i dont hold out much hope for them finding any one else.
they were notorious for violations........... sad,,,,,,,,,,,,

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil rig explodes off Louisiana coast; 11 missing
By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer 41 mins ago


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Fire aboard mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater ...
In this Wednesday April 21, 2010 photo released by the U.S. Coast Guard, a fire aboard the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon burns 52-miles southeast of Venice, La. Helicopters, ships and an airplane searched waters off Louisiana's coast Wednesday for missing workers after an explosion and fire that left an offshore drilling platform tilting in the Gulf of Mexico.

NEW ORLEANS – An explosion rocked an offshore oil drilling platform, sending a column of fire into the sky and touching off a frantic search at sea Wednesday for 11 missing workers.

Most of the 126 workers on the rig Deepwater Horizon escaped safely after the explosion about 10 p.m. Tuesday, the Coast Guard said. Three were critically injured.

The rig, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana's tip, was still burning Wednesday afternoon. It was tilting about 10 degrees. There was no estimate of when the flames might be out.

Helicopters and boats searched the Gulf of Mexico for any sign of the workers who had not been accounted for.

"We're hoping everyone's in a life raft," Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said.

The Coast Guard said there were 17 workers evacuated by air and sea Wednesday morning but not all required hospital stays. Three were in critical condition, Rear Adm. Mary Landry.

The other 98 workers were being brought in by boat and were expected ashore Wednesday evening.

When the explosion happened, the rig was drilling but was not in production, according to Greg Panagos, spokesman for its owner, Transocean Ltd. in Houston. The rig was under contract to BP PLC. BP spokesman Darren Beaudo said all BP personnel were safe but he didn't know how many BP workers had been on the rig.

Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, said crews were doing routine work before the explosion and there were no signs of trouble.

Coast Guard environmental teams were on standby in Morgan City, La., to assess any environmental damage once the fire was out.

According to Transocean's website, the Deepwater Horizon is 396 feet long and 256 feet wide. The semi-submersible rig was built in 2001 by Hyundai Heavy Industries Shipyard in South Korea. The site is known as the Macondo prospect, in 5,000 feet of water.

The rig is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep and has a maximum drill depth of about 5.5 miles. It can accommodate a crew of up to 130.

A semi-submersible rig is floated to a drilling site. It has pontoons and a column that submerge when flooded with seawater. The rig doesn't touch the sea floor, but sits low in the water, where it is moored by several large anchors.

Last September, the Deepwater Horizon set a world deepwater record when it drilled down just over 35,000 feet at another BP site in the Gulf of Mexico, Panagos said.

"It's one of the more advanced rigs out there," he said.

Panagos did not know how much the rig cost to build, but said a similar rig today would run $600 million to $700 million.

Workers typically spend two weeks on the rig at a time, followed by two weeks off. It is equipped with covered lifeboats with supplies to allow them to survive for extended periods if they must evacuate.

Total offshore daily production in the Gulf of Mexico is 1.7 million barrels in federal waters; 6.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day is produced in those waters. There are about 35,000 workers offshore in the Gulf at any one time, according to MMS.

Joe Hurt, a regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors, said working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to enhanced training, improved safety systems and better maintenance.

"In recent years, there's been a lot more money available and more money spent on training and safety," he said.

Transocean has 14 rigs working in the Gulf and 140 worldwide. There are 42 deep water rigs either drilling or doing workovers — upgrades and maintenance — in depths of 1,000 feet or greater in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf, according to the agency, which did not break down the cause of the deaths, the severity of the injuries, or the size of the fires and explosions.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil rig sinks in Gulf of Mexico; 11 still missing
By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writers 1 min ago


http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100422/capt.c0787dc265cb488bab08a13b34872211-c0787dc265cb488bab08a13b34872211-0.jpg?x=400&y=300&q=85&sig=NTm9EDHQ_spOZacRMcZfwQ--


NEW ORLEANS – Officials are saying that the 11 workers missing since an explosion on an oil rig off the Louisiana coast may have been unable to escape the rig when the blast occurred.

Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, said Thursday that when some of the workers who survived were interviewed they said their missing colleagues may not have been able to evacuate in time. Rose says he is unable to confirm the reports.

The platform burned for more than a day after a massive explosion Tuesday. It sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday.

Crews have been searching by air and water for the 11 workers from the Deepwater Horizon, though one relative said family members have been told it's unlikely anyone survived.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An oil platform that burned for more than a day after a massive explosion sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Crews searched by air and water for 11 workers still missing from the Deepwater Horizon, though one relative said family members have been told it's unlikely anyone survived Tuesday night's blast.

Supply vessels had been shooting water into the rig try to control the flames enough to keep it afloat, but couldn't, Coast Guard Petty Officer Katherine McNamara said. The fire was finally out once the rig sank.

Rescue crews have covered the 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat five times. The boats searched all night, hoping the missing workers might have been able to get to a covered lifeboat with supplies.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., said her grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was among the missing. She said he would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.

"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

Other relatives waited anxiously for hourly updates. Family members of one missing worker, Shane Roshto of Amite, Miss., filed a lawsuit in New Orleans on Thursday accusing the rig's owner of negligence. The suit said he was thrown overboard by the explosion and is feared dead, though it did not indicate how family members knew that was what happened.

The suit names Transocean Ltd., which owns the rig, and oil giant BP, which contracted it. A Transocean spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment and BP wouldn't discuss the suit.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he was also among the missing. He worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.

"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Transocean Ltd. spokesman Guy Cantwell said 111 workers who made it off the Deepwater Horizon safely after Tuesday night's blast were ashore Thursday, and four others were still on a boat that operates an underwater robot. A robot will eventually be used to stop the flow of oil or gas to the rig, cutting off the fire. He said officials have not decided when that will happen.

Officials had previously said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but new challenges have arisen now that the platform has sunk.

The well could be spilling up to 8,000 barrels of crude oil a day, McNamara said, and the rig carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel. She didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the Gulf.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler said crews were prepared for the platform to sink.

"There is equipment out there to help with the environment and the potential environmental impact," Butler said.

Seventeen others hurt in the blast had been brought to shore Wednesday with burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation. Four were critically injured.

A slow trek across the water brought most of the uninjured survivors to Port Fourchon, where they were checked by doctors before being brought to a hotel in suburban New Orleans to reunite with their relatives.

One worker said he was awakened by alarms and scrambled to get on a life boat.

"I've been working offshore 25 years and I've never seen anything like this before," said the man, who like others at the hotel declined to give his name.

Stanley Murray of Monterey, La., was reunited with his son, Chad, an electrician aboard the rig who had ended his shift just before the explosion.

"If he had been there five minutes later, he would have been burned up," Stanley Murray said.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. The federal Minerals Management Service said it had inspected the rig three times since it moved to the site in January and found no violations.

The rig is 400 feet by 250 feet, roughly twice the size of a football field, according to Transocean's website. A column of boiling black smoke rose hundreds of feet over the Gulf of Mexico.

Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean, said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.

A total of 126 workers were aboard. Seventy-nine were Transocean workers, six were BP employees and 41 were contracted.

The blast could be one of the nation's deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.

One of the deadliest was in 1964, when a catamaran-type drilling barge operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp. near Eugene Island, about 80 miles off Louisiana, suffered a blowout and explosion while drilling a well. Twenty-one crew members died. The deadliest offshore drilling explosion was in 1988 about 120 miles off Aberdeen, Scotland, in which 167 men were killed.

Rose said the Deepwater Horizon crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion.

"They did not have a lot of time to evacuate. This would have happened very rapidly," he said.

According to Transocean's website, the rig was built in 2001 in South Korea and is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep, drill 5 1/2 miles down, and accommodate a crew of 130. It floats on pontoons and is moored to the sea floor by several large anchors.

Workers typically spend two weeks on the rig at a time, followed by two weeks off. Offshore oil workers typically earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year — more if they have special skills.

Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.

[Jolie Rouge]

11 missing in oil rig blast may not have escaped
By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer 11 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Eleven workers missing from an offshore oil platform may not have escaped after a massive explosion, officials said Thursday.

Crews continued to search by air and water for those missing from the Deepwater Horizon, which burned for nearly a day before sinking into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday.

Adrian Rose, vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd., said crew members who survived Tuesday's explosion indicated the missing may have been near the blast and unable to escape. Officials had hoped they might have been able to get to a covered lifeboat with supplies.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Rescue crews have covered a 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat five times.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., whose grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was among the missing, said family members have been told it's unlikely anyone survived. Roy Kemp would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.

"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Carolyn Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

Other relatives waited anxiously for hourly updates. Family members of one missing worker, Shane Roshto of Amite, Miss., filed a lawsuit in New Orleans on Thursday accusing Transocean of negligence. The suit said he was thrown overboard by the explosion and is feared dead, though it did not indicate how family members knew that was what happened.

The suit also names oil giant BP, which contracted the rig. A Transocean spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment and BP wouldn't discuss the suit.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he was also among the missing. He worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.

"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Transocean Ltd. spokesman Guy Cantwell said 111 workers who made it off the Deepwater Horizon safely after Tuesday night's blast were ashore Thursday, and four others were still on a boat that operates an underwater robot.

Seventeen others hurt in the blast had been brought to shore Wednesday with burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation. Four were critically injured.

Officials had previously said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but new challenges have arisen now that the platform has sunk.

The well could be spilling up to 8,000 barrels of crude oil a day, the Coast Guard said, and the rig carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a one mile by five mile sheen of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface of the water. She said there wasn't any evidence crude oil was coming out after the rig sank, but officials also aren't sure what's going on underwater. They have dispatched a vessel to check.

BP said it has mobilized a flotilla of four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels, including a big storage barge, that can suck more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface.

The federal Minerals Management Service said it had inspected the rig three times since it moved to the site in January and found no violations.

The rig is 400 feet by 250 feet, roughly twice the size of a football field, according to Transocean's website. A column of boiling black smoke rose hundreds of feet over the Gulf of Mexico.

Rose, the Transocean vice president, said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.

One worker said he was awakened by alarms and scrambled to get on a life boat.

"I've been working offshore 25 years and I've never seen anything like this before," said the man, who like others at a hotel where workers were taken after they reached land declined to give his name.

Stanley Murray of Monterey, La., was reunited with his son, Chad, an electrician aboard the rig who had ended his shift just before the explosion.

"If he had been there five minutes later, he would have been burned up," Stanley Murray said.

A total of 126 workers were aboard. Seventy-nine were Transocean workers, six were BP employees and 41 were contracted.

The blast could be one of the nation's deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.

One of the deadliest was in 1964, when a catamaran-type drilling barge operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp. near Eugene Island, about 80 miles off Louisiana, suffered a blowout and explosion while drilling a well. Twenty-one crew members died. The deadliest offshore drilling explosion was in 1988 about 120 miles off Aberdeen, Scotland, in which 167 men were killed.

Rose said the Deepwater Horizon crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion.

"They did not have a lot of time to evacuate. This would have happened very rapidly," he said.

According to Transocean's website, the rig was built in 2001 in South Korea and is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep, drill 5 1/2 miles down, and accommodate a crew of 130. It floats on pontoons and is moored to the sea floor by several large anchors.

Workers typically spend two weeks on the rig at a time, followed by two weeks off. Offshore oil workers typically earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year — more if they have special skills.

Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.

___

[Jolie Rouge]

Burning oil rig sinks, setting stage for big spill
By Kevin Mcgill And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers 22 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A deepwater oil platform that burned for more than a day after a massive explosion sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, creating the potential for a major spill as it underscored the slim chances that the 11 workers still missing survived.

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, which burned violently until the gulf itself extinguished the fire, could unleash more than 300,000 of gallons of crude a day into the water. The environmental hazards would be greatest if the spill were to reach the Louisiana coast, some 50 miles away.

Crews searched by air and water for the missing workers, hoping they had managed to reach a lifeboat, but one relative said family members have been told it's unlikely any of the missing survived Tuesday night's blast. The Coast Guard found two lifeboats but no one was inside. More than 100 workers escaped the explosion and fire; four were critically injured.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., said her grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was among the missing. She said he would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded. "They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

Jed Kersey, of Leesville, La., said his 33-year-old son, John, had finished his shift on the rig floor and was sleeping when the explosion occurred. He said his son told him that all 11 missing workers were on the rig floor at the time of the explosion. "He said it was like a war zone," said Jed Kersey, a former offshore oil worker.

An alarm sounded and the electricity went out, sending John Kersey and other workers scurrying to a lifeboat that took them to a nearby service boat, his father said. "They waited for as many people as they could," Jed Kersey said. He added that his son wasn't ready to talk publicly about his experience.

As the rig burned, supply vessels shot water into it to try to keep it afloat and avoid an oil spill, but there were additional explosions Thursday. Officials had previously said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but new challenges have arisen now that the platform has sunk.

The well could be spilling up to 336,000 gallons of crude oil a day, Coast Guard Petty Officer Katherine McNamara said. She said she didn't know whether the crude oil was spilling into the gulf. The rig also carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but that would likely evaporate if the fire didn't consume it.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a 1-mile-by-5-mile rainbow sheen with a dark center of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface of the water. She said there wasn't any evidence crude oil was coming out after the rig sank, but officials also aren't sure what's going on underwater. They have dispatched a vessel to check.

The oil will do much less damage at sea than it would if it hits the shore, said Cynthia Sarthou, executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network. "If it gets landward, it could be a disaster in the making," Sarthou said.

Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's office of response and restoration, said the spill is not expected to come onshore in the next three to four days. "But if the winds were to change, it could come ashore more rapidly," he said.

At the worst-case figure of 336,000 gallons a day, it would take more than a month for the amount of crude oil spilled to equal the 11 million gallons spilled from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

The well will need to be capped off underwater. Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler said crews were prepared for the platform to sink and had the equipment at the site to limit the environmental damage.

Oil giant BP, which contracted the rig, said it has mobilized four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels, including a big storage barge, that can suck more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface.

Crews searching for the missing workers, meanwhile, have covered the 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat five times. The boats searched all night.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he was also among the missing. He worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years. "We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Adrian Rose, vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd., said Thursday some surviving workers said in company interviews that their missing colleagues may not have been able to evacuate in time. He said he was unable to confirm whether that was the case.

Those who escaped did so mainly by getting on lifeboats that were lowered into the gulf, Rose said. Weekly emergency drills seemed to help, he said, adding that workers apparently stuck together as they fled the devastating blast. "There are a number of uncorroborated stories, a lot of them really quite heroic stories of how people looked after each other. There was very little panic," Rose said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Kevin Fernandez was the flight mechanic on a helicopter that was the first to respond, about 15 minutes after the explosion. Fernandez said he could see the fire from 80 miles away, with flames rising about 500 feet. "I was kind of expecting worse" in terms of fatalities, he said. But all the survivors already had made their way from the lifeboats into a supply boat. Fernandez and his crew plucked two critically injured survivors to a nearby rig that had a paramedic on board.

Family members of two missing workers filed separate lawsuits Thursday accusing Transocean and BP of negligence. Both companies declined to comment about legal action against them after the first suit was filed.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil rigs, conducted three routine inspections of the Deepwater Horizon this year — in February, March and on April 1 — and found no violations, MMS spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana when the explosion and fire occurred, sending a column of boiling black smoke hundreds of feet over the gulf.

Rose has said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. Precisely what went wrong is under investigation.

Transocean Ltd. spokesman Guy Cantwell said 111 workers who made it off the Deepwater Horizon safely after the blast were ashore Thursday, and four others were still on a boat that operates an underwater robot. A robot will eventually be used to stop the flow of oil to the rig. He said officials have not decided when that will happen.

Seventeen workers brought to shore Wednesday suffered burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation. Four were critically injured.

Rose said the crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion. They had little time to evacuate, he said.

The explosion is not expected to have a major impact on the oil industry. There are 90 rigs in the offshore Gulf of Mexico either drilling wells or performing work on existing wells, according to the MMS. "It's a personal tragedy," Arthur Weglein, director of the Mission Oriented Seismic Research program at the University of Houston. "Besides that, it's just one rig less in the deep water."

The explosion came less than a month after President Barack Obama's decision to open portions of the East Coast to oil and gas exploration, and opponents of the move have seized on the blast as a reason to reverse course. "The bottom line is that when you drill for oil, there is always a risk that not only puts lives on the line, but a risk that puts miles of coastline and the economy on the line as well," Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, both New Jersey Democrats, said in a statement.

Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the gulf, according to the Minerals Management Service. Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O'Berry said accidents are rare given that 30,000 people work on rigs there every day. "They're highly trained. They know the dangers," O'Berry said. "The safety precautions they take are extreme. A testament to that is of the 126, 115 are home today with their families."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Amid search for Deepwater Horizon oil rig survivors: What happened?
By Patrik Jonsson Thu Apr 22, 12:13 pm ET

Atlanta – The Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig is one of the most advanced engineering feats in the world, having drilled deeper than any other waterborne platform. But when the massive fifth-generation rig exploded late Tuesday night, injuring 17 workers and leaving 11 still missing, the accident proved even the most modern deepwater platforms are not immune to an age-old danger of tapping the earth: what roughnecks call, simply, blowout.

As Coast Guard planes and helicopters resumed the search for survivors Thursday morning, rescued rig hands arriving in Kenner, La., said that everything happened very fast. The Houston Chronicle quoted an unidentified survivor as saying, “It blew out and we had like zero time from the time the alarm went. It was all in flames.”

The Deepwater Horizon is on the cusp of global oil exploration, which is venturing ever further out to sea and deeper into the earth's crust.

IN PICTURES: Louisiana oil rig explosion

The rig is in essence a giant flexible drill bit that can poke and prod for deposits up to 32,000 feet deep. It is run by roughnecks, roustabouts, tool pushers, directional drillers, and mud men, all directed by a "company man," employed, in this case, by BP, which is leasing the rig from Geneva-based Transocean.

The semi-submersible rig had anchored 41 miles off Louisiana, completing a concrete casing for a well drilled to 18,000 feet in an area called the Macondo Prospect.

The company acknowledged that something happened in the hole, evidenced by the fact that the fire was being fueled by escaping oil or gas. “There was undoubtedly some abnormal pressure buildup,” Transocean safety director Adrian Rose said, according to Business Week. Rose gave no other clues about why the rig blew or why the pressure couldn't be controlled.

But former oil rig mud engineer Rusty Galloway in Lafayette, La., explains one possible cause. So-called mud hands on the drill floor mix chemicals into a stream of mud that backstops the gas or oil while allowing the bit to continue to turn its clockwise rotation into the earth.

"Basically, what can happen is you've got no weight or not enough weight to keep gas from coming out, from coming free," says Mr. Galloway.

The blowout theory surprised at least one industry expert. Rigs have complex safeguards to keep gas from escaping in case of an accident, including mechanisms that can physically shear the pipe to stop the flow.

"As soon as an incident takes place, a number of valves both underwater and on the rig will shut down the flow of hydrocarbons," says Jorge Pinon, former president of Amoco Latin America. "It's the same mechanism where if you hit a gas pump with your car, a valve will close the pipe that goes into the underground gasoline storage tank."

As the Coast Guard and the federal Minerals Management Service get ready to start an official investigation into the cause, survivors are hailing the response of the rig managers. Survivor Jim Ingram told the Times Picayune that weekly safety drills paid off as workers filed into life rafts that were lowered to the water.

"The standards out there are extremely high, when it comes to safety," said Mr. Ingram.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100422/ts_csm/296222_1

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf towns pray for news from Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion
By Patrik Jonsson Wed Apr 21, 7:48 pm ET


Atlanta – In the roughneck communities of coastal Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, families gathered and prayed Wednesday amid conflicting news reports about the plight of 11 oil rig workers missing after the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion Tuesday night.

Dora Ezell prayed, too, although hers had already been answered. Her husband, Miles Richard Ezell, a career rig worker on the state-of-the-art deepwater drilling platform, had earlier in the day been listed among the missing, but had been located in good shape.

"Definitely people need prayers," says Ms. Ezell, reached at her Hattiesburg, Miss., home on Wednesday. "The rig has received excellence awards, so I don't know what could have happened. It's always been a very, very safe environment. I just thank God I have a husband."

The small bayou towns of America's oil belt have a precarious relationship with the oil fields. Jobs ranging from roustabouts to roughnecks, galley hands to mud hands offer a lot of money, often for people with high school degrees or less. The rewards and time off is great, but the danger is always in the background, says Lafayette, La., lawyer Rusty Galloway, a former rig worker.

"They come from small towns where the oil field is their life," says Mr. Galloway. "The fears that these people have, it's life and death out there. You risk your life for a lot of money."

The first news was wrongNews from officials in Plaquemines Parish first indicated that a lifeboat had been sighted after the 10 p.m. Tuesday explosion and then that the 11 workers were "safe and sound." But the Coast Guard quickly dismissed that report, indicating that they'd neither heard of a lifeboat nor located the 11 missing crew members. The confusion could have come about from a missing or partial crew manifest, says Galloway.

Coast Guard crews in cutters, helicopters, and an airplane expanded their search cordon Wednesday as they remained "optimistic that we can find them," as Petty Officer Mike Blakney told the Los Angeles Times.

But at a press conference later in the day, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said, "We have no idea where the 11 unaccounted-for personnel are."

The majority of the rig workers are veteran third-party contractors while 26 are directly employed by Houston-based Transocean, which built and owns the rig. Six others are employed by BP, which is leasing the rig at about $500,000 a day to explore oil deposits lying as deep as 30,000 feet below the Gulf's floor.

Drilling miles below the Gulf floorThe crew had been involved in some of the most dramatic drilling ever done. The Deepwater Horizon last year broke the world record drill depth of 32,000 feet as it uncovered vast new oil reserves in an area known as Tiber.

"The new technology on this rig is state of the art, and they don't let a bunch of rookies operate this equipment," says Jorge Pinon, former president of Amoco Latin America. "These are experienced professionals who know what they're doing."

Much of rig work is "hurry up and wait," Galloway says, but "things also happen fast when you're working offshore."

It's not yet clear what caused the explosion. The fire is apparently burning on-board fuel, but has proved stubborn. Along with rescuers, teams of environmental disaster experts are also on scene, although the damage isn't expected to be widespread.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100421/ts_csm/296139_1

[shadowcats]

he worked for BP and he did work on the drill bits,,,,,, he said they always were shortcutting on their parts and used some of them longer than they were allowed to cut back on costs......... and those inspections , were a joke , he said most of the rigs were bombs waiting to go off,,,,,,,,
my dad died over ten years ago of cancer that we thought he got being exposed to chemicals on that rigg........ they are so lax there. he got splashed with chemicals all time when he was cleaning those drills casue they were always in a hurry to pump,,,,,,,,,,,,
this is sad and all those men probley didnt have a chance...........

[Jolie Rouge]

Cook on La. oil rig that exploded recalls escape
[/b]By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer Tue Apr 27, 7:25 am ET

NEW ORLEANS – Oleander Benton, a cook on an oil rig that exploded off the Louisiana coast, was sitting at a laundry room table with a friend when the lights went out. Then, there was the blast.

The Deepwater Horizon platform shuddered, debris fell from the ceiling and Benton hit the floor, as she had been trained to do. She scrambled through hallways littered with rubble, following a man in a white T-shirt. "I could not see anything but that man. He just kept on saying 'Come this way, come that way.' It was like he was coaching me to my lifeboat, because I couldn't see," she said.

She made it across the sweltering, mud-caked deck to a lifeboat — one of 115 people to safely escape the platform after the explosion a week ago. Eleven others are missing and presumed dead.

Benton, 52, recalled her tale as crews used a remote sub to try to shut off an underwater oil well that's gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of the wrecked drilling platform. If crews cannot stop the leak quickly, they might need to drill another well to redirect the oil, a process that could take about two months while oil washes up along a broad stretch of shore, from the white-sand beaches of Florida's Panhandle to the swamps of Louisiana.

The oil, which could reach shore in as little as three days, is escaping from two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface.

Nightmares have haunted Benton since the explosion April 20. She remembers following the man who knew his way around the platform, which is about the size of two football fields. She stumbled as he led her to the deck. "Mud was everywhere ... This was mud that was shooting up from the well. It was oily mud, real oily," she said.

The fire made the already muggy night almost unbearable. Benton's name was checked off as she boarded a lifeboat, then there was a roll call to make sure everyone was accounted for. "It looked like it was taking forever to get that boat in the water," she said, but "I think that's just because I was so anxious to go."

Benton didn't want to discuss her injuries, other than to say that she was bruised. Her attorney, Stephen Rue, said she was having trouble sleeping and is suffering symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome. She has not yet filed a lawsuit in the case.

As of Tuesday morning, oil that leaked from the rig site was spread over an area about 48 miles long and 80 miles wide at its widest. The borders of the spill were uneven, making it difficult to calculate how many square miles are covered, Coast Guard Petty Officer Erik Swanson said. "Right now, the weather's in our favor," Swanson said, explaining that the wind was blowing the oil away from shore Tuesday. But Swanson said the winds could shift later in the week and there was concern about oil reaching the shore.

So far, skimming vessels had collected more than 48,000 gallons of oily water, Swanson said. "Our goal is to fight this thing as far offshore as possible," he said.

The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP PLC.

Crews used robot submarines to activate valves in hopes of stopping the leaks, but they may not know until Tuesday if that strategy will work. BP also mobilized two rigs to drill a relief well if needed. Such a well could help redirect the oil, though it could also take weeks to complete, especially at that depth.

BP plans to collect leaking oil on the ocean bottom by lowering a large dome to capture the oil and then pumping it through pipes and hoses into a vessel on the surface, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP Exploration and Production.

It could take up to a month to get the equipment in place. "That system has been deployed in shallower water, but it has never been deployed at 5,000 feet of water, so we have to be careful," he said.

The spill, moving slowly north and spreading east and west, was about 30 miles from the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast. The Coast Guard said kinks in the pipe were helping stem the flow of oil.

From the air Monday afternoon, the oil spill reached as far as the eye could see. There was little evidence of a major cleanup, with only a handful of vessels near the site of the leak. The oil sheen was a shiny light blue color, translucent and blending with the water, but a distinct edge between the oil slick and the sea could be seen for miles.

George Crozier, oceanographer and executive director at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, said he was studying wind and ocean currents driving the oil.

He said Pensacola, Fla., is probably the eastern edge of the threatened area, though no one really knows what the effects will be. "We've never seen anything like this magnitude," he said. "The problems are going to be on the beaches themselves. That's where it will be really visible."

Concern Monday focused on the Chandeleur and Breton barrier islands in Louisiana, where thousands of birds are nesting. "It's already a fragile system. It would be devastating to see anything happen to that system," said Mark Kulp, a University of New Orleans geologist.

Oil makes it difficult for birds to fly or float on the water's surface. Plant life can also suffer serious harm. Whales have been spotted near the oil spill, though they did not seem to be in any distress.

The spill also threatened oyster beds in Breton Sound on the eastern side of the Mississippi River. Harvesters could only watch and wait.

"That's our main oyster-producing area," said John Tesvich, a fourth-generation oyster farmer with Port Sulphur Fisheries Co. His company has about 4,000 acres of oyster grounds that could be affected if the spill worsens. "Trying to move crops would be totally speculative," Tesvich said. "You wouldn't know where to move a crop. You might be moving a crop to a place that's even worse."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100427/ap_on_bi_ge/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion/print;_ylt=AmSNS_Pdq5XYVPk8Y_0qmExv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

La. gov declares emergency over Gulf oil spill
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer 21 mins ago

VENICE, La. – Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and the federal government sent in skimmers and booms Thursday as oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico oozed toward the fragile coastline.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said at the White House that the government's priority was to support oil company BP PLC as it fights to hold back the oil surging from the seabed in amounts much higher than previously estimated.

BP was operating the Deepwater Horizon, which was drilling in 5,000 feet of water about 40 miles offshore when it exploded last week. Eleven crew members are missing and presumed dead, and the government says 5,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well underneath it.

Those who count on the Gulf for their livelihoods fretted Thursday about oil that could reach the coast as soon as Friday.

In Empire, La., Frank and Mitch Jurisich could smell the oil coming from just beyond the murky water where their family has harvested oysters for three generations. "About 30 minutes ago we started smelling it," Mitch Jurisich said. "That's when you know it's getting close and it hits you right here."

They spent Thursday hauling in enough oysters to fill more than 100 burlap sacks, stopping to eat some because it might be their last chance before oil contaminates them.

The Coast Guard urged BP to formally request more resources from the Defense Department. President Barack Obama has dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to help with the spill. The president said his administration will use "every single available resource at our disposal" to respond.

Obama directed officials to aggressively confront the spill, but the cost of the cleanup will fall on BP, spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

An executive for BP PLC said on NBC's "Today" that the company would welcome help from the military. "We'll take help from anyone," said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP Exploration and Production.

A third leak at the well site was discovered Wednesday, and government officials said the amount coming out is five times as much as originally estimated.

Suttles had initially disputed the government's estimate, and that the company was unable to handle the operation to contain it. But early Thursday, he acknowledged on "Today" that the leak may be as bad as the government says. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed and estimates have to come from how much oil makes it to the surface.

If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, leaked 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

As dawn broke Thursday in the oil industry hub of Venice, about 75 miles from New Orleans and not far from the mouth of the Mississippi River, crews loaded an orange oil boom aboard a supply boat at Bud's Boat Launch. There, local officials expressed frustration with the pace of the government's response and the communication they were getting from the Coast Guard and BP officials. "We're not doing everything we can do," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, which straddles the Mississippi River at the tip of Louisiana.

There's a growing tension in towns like Port Sulphur and Empire along Louisiana 23, which runs south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River into prime oyster and shrimping waters.

Companies like Chevron and ConocoPhillips have facilities nearby, and some are hesitant to criticize BP or the federal government, knowing the oil industry is as much a staple here as the fishermen. "I don't think there's a lot of blame going around here, people are just concerned about their livelihoods," said Sullivan Vullo, who owns La Casa Cafe in Port Sulphur.

Louisiana has opened a special shrimp season along parts of the coast so shrimpers can harvest the profitable white shrimp before the spill has an effect.

The spill has moved steadily toward the mouth of the Mississippi River and the wetland areas east of it, home to hundreds of species of wildlife and near some rich oyster grounds.

Jindal on Thursday declared a state of emergency so officials could begin preparing for the oil's impact. His declaration says at least 10 wildlife management areas and refuges in his state and neighboring Mississippi are in the oil plume's path. It also notes that billions of dollars have been invested in coastal restoration projects that may be at risk.

Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing resources. "You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.

A fleet of boats working under an oil industry consortium has been using booms to corral and then skim oil from the surface.

Crews operating submersible robots tried and failed to activate a shut-off device to halt the flow of oil on the sea bottom. A controlled test to burn the leaking oil was successful Wednesday, but conditions Thursday did not allow for more burns.

BP has asked local fishermen for help. A memo from Sen. David Vitter's office said BP was seeking to contract with shrimp boats, oyster boats and other vessels for hire to help with deploying containment boom in the Gulf. Staging areas were in Venice, La.; Mobile, Ala.; Pascagoula and Biloxi, Miss.; and Pensacola, Fla. Information on the "Vessel Opportunity Program" also was posted on Sen. Mary Landrieu's website.

Hai Huynh, 39, and his 22-year-old deck hand Robert Huynh were ready to help however they could even though the Coast Guard will only allow vessels with lifeboats to help with carrying oil booms to contain the spill. "We want to go out and help clean up the oil," Robert Huynh said aboard their freshly painted steel-hulled shrimp boat, the Miss Kimberly. "We're ready."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100429/ap_on_bi_ge/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion/print;_ylt=All0KTB73KKnQ3lpaVLSoRmp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

[b]USA: BP Oil Spill – 42,000 Gallons of Oil Spilling into Ocean Every Day
Posted by Linda Haywood on Apr 27th, 2010 and filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry


Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico (Photo courtesy Gulf Restoration Network / Southwings)
In the Gulf of Mexico on 20th April 2010 a BP contracted oil-rig suffered an explosion before sinking to the sea bed leaving an oil pipe spilling 42,000 gallons of oil every day straight into the ocean. This translates as 158,970 litres.

BP leased the oil rig from Transocean, but as the responsible party, must foot the bill for the mammoth clean-up operation which has still failed to stem the oil spill six days after the explosion.

Eleven people died in the disaster at the MODU Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible drilling rig contracted by BP to drill for oil at the Mississippi Block 252 site, approximately 52 miles southeast of Venice, La. 97. Other workers were medically evacuated while the rest of the workforce escaped aboard a supply vessel.

The Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, has ordered flags in Louisiana to be flown at half-staff until 3rd May 2010 in respect for the families of the eleven workers killed in the disaster.

A graphic of the oil slick was released by the unified command which includes the US Coastguard and BP.

http://theglobalherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/graph-of-oil-spill-gulf-of-mexico.jpg

The campaign director of the Gulf Restoration Network, Aaron Viles, said:


We’re most concerned about the resident pod of sperm whales, the large population of whale sharks and the sea turtles, many species of which are already threatened and endangered in the Gulf.

From my observation, the clean up effort is no where near large enough. We flew over Sunday, and despite beautiful weather and calm seas there were no skimmer boats or booms being applied. Three planes were dropping chemical dispersant but… due to the expansive nature of the spill BP needs to bring far more resources to this crisis.

To report oiled wildlife, call 1-866-557-1401 and leave a message. Messages will be checked hourly by the unified command team.

http://theglobalherald.com/usabp-oil-spill-42000-gallons-of-oil-spilling-into-ocean-every-day/2717/

[Jolie Rouge]

A containable accident, then suddenly a crisis
By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 14 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Suddenly, everything changed.

For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess while keeping an eye on the operation.

But then government scientists realized the leak was five times larger than they had been led to believe, and days of lulling statistics and reassuring words gave way Thursday to an all-hands-on-deck emergency response. Now questions are sure to be raised about a self-policing system that trusted a commercial operator to take care of its own mishap even as it grew into a menace imperiling Gulf Coast nature and livelihoods from Florida to Texas.

The pivot point had come Wednesday night, at a news conference at an oil research center in the tiny community of Robert, La. That's when the nation learned the earlier estimates were way off, and an additional leak had been found.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama set in motion a larger federal mobilization, pledging to deploy "every single available resource" to the area and ordering his disaster and environmental leaders to get down there in person. Only a few days after the Coast Guard assured the country there was "ample time" to protect the coast if oil came ashore, warnings from the government were newly alarming.

"I am frightened for the country, for the environment," David Kennedy, assistant chief of the National Ocean Service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "This is a very, very big thing, and the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

The political subtext of the crisis was clear and increasingly on people's minds, whether from a federal office deploying oil-containment booms or from a Louisiana parish awaiting yet another sucker punch from the sea.

Will this be Obama's Katrina? Should the federal and state governments have done more, and earlier? Did they learn the lessons of the devastating hurricane?

Political calculations vied with the increasingly scary Gulf reality — hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil and its progression to landfall Thursday night. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who also is in a hot campaign for the Senate, flew over the slick and commended the federal actions to date but wondered if anyone, really, could be doing enough in this situation. "It appeared to me," he said, "that this is probably much bigger than we can fathom."

The crisis began with a massive explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon on April 20, more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The search for 11 missing workers overshadowed environmental concerns until they were given up for lost.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, chief of the Coast Guard in the region, said at the outset that most of the oil was burning off, leaving only a moderate rainbow sheen on the water and no sign of a major spill.

"Both the industry and the Coast Guard have technical experts actively at work," she said. "So there's a whole technical team on both sides of the aisle here to ensure we keep the conditions stable."

Two days later, the Deepwater Horizon sank and crews spotted a 1-by-5-mile sheen with a dark center that appeared to be a crude oil mix. Obama got his first briefing on the accident.

Landry said the following day that no oil appeared to be leaking from a well head at the ocean floor, nor was any leaking noted at the surface.

At the White House, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said that sometimes accidents happen, and the loss of the Deepwater Horizon was no reason to back off on the president's recent decision to support expanded offshore drilling.

Throughout last week and into this one, the government was deferring to BP on what was being done at the site and on assessments of progress.

The Coast Guard was not doing its own independent, firsthand assessment of the seabed rupture. Landry repeatedly asserted that BP was the responsible party and would shoulder the costs and organizational duties associated with the cleanup effort while the Coast Guard monitored things and approved the numbers of vessels working the scene and the methods of control.

On Monday, Landry offered assurances that the Gulf Coast should be safe. "This is ample time to protect sensitive areas and prepare for cleanup should the oil impact this area," she said. And at sea, BP officials were "doing their best."

On Wednesday night, she reported the findings of federal experts that up to 5,000 barrels a day were leaking from the well. BP had estimated only 1,000. As well, the company told the Coast Guard a new leak had been found. Obama was briefed on these developments on Air Force One while returning at night from the Midwest.

By Thursday afternoon, the White House had assembled a team of top advisers to showcase the administration's determination to head off the damage posed by the oil slick. And Gibbs acknowledged details of the president's drilling proposal might be revisited, depending on the investigation into the rig explosion and spill.

The equation had changed, like a hurricane setting a new course.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100430/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_what_went_wrong/print;_ylt=AuPgpKaD7j3gVr9SaSZYB5qp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Heavy winds and high tides hamper Gulf oil fight
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer 31 mins ago

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER – Heavy winds and high tides complicated efforts to hold back oil that threatened to coat birds and other marine life as it oozed ashore from the Gulf of Mexico on Friday. The White House responded to the massive spill by halting any new offshore oil projects until safeguards are in place to prevent rig explosions like the one that caused it.

The National Weather Service predicted winds, high tides and waves through Sunday that could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds and lakes of southeastern Louisiana. Seas of 6 to 7 feet were pushing tides several feet above normal toward the coast, and the wind was pushing oily water over the booms meant to contain it.

President Barack Obama assured Gulf Coast communities that the federal government was fully prepared to meet its responsibilities, and several officials from his administration descended on the coast Friday.

"I am confident we will get to the bottom of what happened here," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "Those responsible will be held accountable."

His department announced it would send teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Crews are using at least six remotely operated vehicles to try to shut off an underwater valve, but so far they've been unsuccessful.

They are also drilling a relief well to decrease the pressure and slowing the leak, though that could take up to three months.

Meanwhile, concern grew about animals and plants on the ecologically fragile coastline. A rescue operation at Fort Jackson, about 70 miles southeast of New Orleans, had its first patient Friday, a young northern gannett found offshore. The bird is normally white with a yellow head and long, pointed beak but was covered in thick, black oil. Workers with Delaware-based Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research use Dawn blue dishwashing soap to scrub any oil-tainted animals.

Down the coast, at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., scientists, veterinarians and researchers frantically prepared for the possible arrival of hundreds of oily sea mammals in the coming days.

The nonprofit facility's director, Dr. Moby Solangi, said Friday the site will be ground zero for injured marine mammals from Texas to Florida.

Pools are freshly cleaned and prepared to handle sea turtles, manatees and dolphins. There are as many as 5,000 dolphins in the Gulf area between the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts and the oil rig, many giving birth right now.

"It's very bad timing," Solangi said. "We're going to have a lot of babies here. We're looking at a colossal tragedy."

The cause of the explosion has not been determined. Oil services contractor Halliburton Inc. said in a statement Friday that workers had finished a cementing operation 20 hours before the rig went up in flames.

Halliburton is named as a defendant in most of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Gulf Coast people and businesses claiming the oil spill could ruin them financially. Without elaborating, one lawsuit filed by an injured technician on the rig claims that Halliburton "improperly and negligently" performed its job in cementing the well, "increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill."

Cementing is a process of applying a liquid slurry of cement and water to points inside or outside of the casing, a pipe used to prevent the wall of the hole from caving in during drilling and providing a means of bringing oil and gas up later if the well starts producing.

Halliburton said it had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the explosion, performing a variety of tasks, including cementing.

"Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have (led) up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues," the company said in a statement Friday.

Volunteers started arriving Friday in Venice, La., though there wasn't much for them to do because the water was so choppy. About two dozen workers in hard hats and lifejackets were stuck on shore at a marina, lounging on small work boats, some laden with boom, ready to go to work. Some smoked cigarettes and spat sunflower seeds as they waited for assignments.

Volunteer Valerie Gonsoulin, a 51-year-old kayaker from Lafayette who wore an "America's Wetlands" hat, said she hoped to help spread containment booms to hold back the oil.

"I've been sitting here watching that NASA image grow and it grows," she said. "I knew it would hit every place I fish and love."

So far, boom has been laid around all the area's wildlife refuges, including the fragile Chandeleur Islands. But with the waves much choppier and higher than normal, the water is rolling right over the booms and carrying the oil with it.

"It just can't take the wave action," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, who surveyed the coastline from a helicopter Friday and said he spotted several places where booms broke free or were covered by oily water.

Wind was also hampering efforts by the state of Louisiana to divert thousands of gallons of fresh water from the Mississippi River to try to flush out the wetlands.

The Louisiana National Guard prepared to send communication equipment, boats, all-terrain vehicles and other equipment to help.

Obama on Friday directed that no new offshore oil drilling leases be issued unless rigs have new safeguards.

"We are making sure any leases going forward have those safeguards," Obama said at a White House Rose Garden event. He had recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf.

The Pentagon on Friday approved the use of two Air Force planes to dump chemicals on the oil spill, which civilian planes have already been doing. The Navy also sent equipment for the cleanup, and Pentagon officials were talking with the Department of Homeland Security to figure out what other help the military could give.

The Coast Guard is working with rig operator BP to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and has set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.

Faint fingers of oily sheen began reaching the Mississippi River delta late Thursday, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.

The Coast Guard defended the federal response so far. Asked on all three network television morning shows Friday whether the government has done enough to push oil company BP PLC to plug the underwater leak and protect the coast, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said the response led by her agency has been rapid, sustained and has adapted as the threat grew.

The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening to eclipse even the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the Exxon Valdez, the grounded tanker that leaked 11 million gallons in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

The sheen measured about 70 miles by 130 miles as of Thursday, and officials expected to update that figure Friday.

BP has requested more resources from the Defense Department, especially underwater equipment that might be better than what is commercially available. A BP executive said the corporation would "take help from anyone." That includes fishermen who could be hired to help deploy containment boom.

The company also sought ideas from the government and other oil companies and was poised to implement at least one of them — using chemicals to disperse the oil underwater — later Friday.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and asked the federal government if he could call up 6,000 National Guard troops to help. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency for the state's Panhandle.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100430/ap_on_bi_ge/us_louisiana_oil_rig_explosion/print;_ylt=Ap82P8XHDNQDZFHZdXCqbpNv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

This oil spill 'the bad one' — recipe for disaster
By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Fri Apr 30, 5:41 pm ET

WASHINGTON – What makes an oil spill really bad? Most of the ingredients for it are now blending in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that mixes easily with water; a resultant gooey mixture that is hard to burn and even harder to clean; water that's home to vulnerable spawning grounds for new life; and a coastline with difficult-to-scrub marshlands.

Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one," said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened."

It hasn't quite become a total disaster yet. But it's hard to imagine it not being devastating, said Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills. The Louisiana State University professor has been testing samples of the spilled crude.

He compared what's brewing to another all-too-familiar Gulf Coast threat: "This has got all the characteristics of a Category 5 hurricane."

If conditions don't change quickly, devastation of the highest magnitude is headed for somewhere along the coast, said Overton, who works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Crews are using at least six remotely operated vehicles to try to shut off an underwater valve, but so far they've been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, high winds and waves are pushing oily water over the booms meant to contain it. Besides BP, a slew of federal and state agencies are scrambling to minimize the onslaught of damage.

Experts in oil spills have drills every few years to practice their response for spills of "national significance." One of those practice runs took place just last month in Maine. The Gulf of Mexico leak is a "combination of all the bad things happening" and makes it far worse than any disaster imagined in the drills, said Nancy Kinner, director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "This is relentless," Kinner said.

Most Americans think of Exxon Valdez when it comes to spills. But the potential and likelihood here "is well beyond that," said University of Rhode Island ocean engineering professor Malcolm Spaulding. Because the Deepwater Horizon well has not been capped and may flow for months more, it should be compared to a bigger more dangerous one from a well explosion in 1979, said Tunnell. That was Ixtoc 1, off the coast of Mexico. It was the worst peacetime oil spill on record.

The current spill "is kind of a worst case scenario," Tunnell said.

What makes this spill relentless and most similar to Ixtoc 1 is that it's an active well that keeps flowing. The Exxon Valdez was a tanker with a limited supply of oil. The rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast may leak for months before a relief well can be drilled to stop the flow, Kinner said.

And LSU's Overton said: "I'm not very optimistic that they'll be drilling a relief well in three months."

The type of oil involved is also a major problem. While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, this isn't. It's a heavier blend because it comes from deep under the ocean surface, Overton said.

"If I had to pick a bad oil, I'd put this right up there. The only thing that's not bad about this is that it doesn't have a lot of sulfur in it and the high sulfur really smells bad."

The first analysis of oil spill samples showed it contains asphalt-like substances that make a major sticky mess, he said. This is because the oil is older than most oil in the region and is very dense.

This oil also emulsifies well, Overton said. Emulsification is when oil and water mix thoroughly together, like a shampoo, which is mostly water, said Penn State engineering professor Anil Kulkarni.

It "makes a thick gooey chocolate mousse type of mix," Kulkarni said.

And once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, doesn't rinse off as easily, can't be eaten by oil-munching microbes as easily, and doesn't burn as well, experts said.

That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons, Overton and others said.

Under better circumstances, with calmer winds and water, the oil might have a chance of rising without immediately emulsifying, but that's not happening here, Kulkarni said. It's pretty much mixed by the time it gets to the surface.

The wind and waves are also pushing the oil directly toward some of the most sensitive coastal areas: the marshlands of Louisiana and surrounding states.

And there are three types of beaches: sandy, rocky and marshy. Sandy beaches, like those in Florida, are the easiest to clean, Overton said. By far the hardest are marshlands and that's where the oil is heading first.

Marshes are so delicate that just trying to clean them causes damage, Kinner said. Once the oily mess penetrates, grasses must be cut. But it also penetrates the soil and that is extremely difficult to get out, she said.

The normal bacteria that eats oil needs oxygen to work, and in the soils of the marsh, there's not enough oxygen for that process, she said.

It's also the time of year in the Gulf of Mexico when fish spawn, plankton bloom and the delicate ecosystem is at a vulnerable stage.

Hurricane season is fast approaching in June and experts are sure the oil will still be flowing by then. Though it might seem counterintuitive, a big storm could help by dispersing and diluting the worst of the oil, Overton said. "A hurricane is Mother Nature's vacuum cleaner," Overton said. Normally it cleans things up. But that's not a solution with a continuing spill.


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[Jolie Rouge]

Many endangered turtles dying on Texas Gulf Coast
By Ramit Plushnick-masti, Associated Press Writer Fri Apr 30, 5:22 pm ET

HIGH ISLAND, Texas – Flies buzz everywhere and the stench is overwhelming as biologist Lyndsey Howell stops to analyze the remains of yet another endangered sea turtle washed up from the Gulf of Mexico. "It's been on the beach for a while," Howell says, flipping over the decomposing, dried-out shell.

More than 30 dead turtles have been found stranded on Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula south of Houston this month — an unusually high number that has puzzled researchers, in part because most are so decomposed that there are few clues left about why they died.

The number of strandings on these shores is double what scientists and volunteers normally see as the turtles begin nesting in April, says Howell, who patrols the beaches as part of her job with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of the 35 turtles found, all but three were dead. Thirty-three were Kemp's ridleys, an endangered species researchers have spent decades trying to rehabilitate.

Many of the turtles appear to have propeller wounds from boats or have become entangled in fishing nets or lines, Howell says. Others have parasites or are emaciated.

The increase in deaths comes as the turtles swim closer to shore to nest and shrimping season gets into full swing along the upper Texas coast, said Roger Zimmerman, lab director of the NOAA marine fishery laboratory in Galveston.

"Historically, they increase about this time of year. ... This is a few more than we would normally expect," Zimmerman said. "We are concerned and we'll keep an eye on it."

Researchers are also watching the massive oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. If the oil were to begin moving in the direction of the Texas Gulf — which isn't predicted at the moment — many Kemp's ridleys swimming in to nest would be right in its path. In 1979, after an oil spill off the coast of Mexico, Kemp's ridleys were airlifted to cleaner waters.

Shrimping has long been blamed for sea turtle deaths. Shrimpers are required to install grid-like devices in their nets that are designed to allow turtles to escape. Shrimpers caught without the turtle excluder devices — or TEDs — may be fined thousands of dollars and have their catch seized by federal regulators.

Still, some are reluctant to invest $800 on the TEDs or are angry over the extra work they create aboard the shrimp boats, so they gamble they won't be caught.

"When there is more shrimp, there are more turtle strandings," Zimmerman said. "That correlation has been well-documented."

Educating fishermen, the public and shrimpers about preserving Kemp's ridleys is part of a new federal recovery plan expected to be approved in the coming months. The goal is to upgrade the Kemp's ridleys from endangered to threatened within six years — but that depends on having 10,000 nesting females per season. Currently, there are about 6,000.

Nesting season begins in mid-April and lasts into July. Most Kemp's ridleys nest on a beach in Mexico or at Padre Island in south Texas. But increasing numbers have been seeking out the shores of Galveston and Bolivar.

Howell and Zimmerman hope the deaths indicate the population has increased and even more turtles are heading toward the Texas Gulf Coast to nest.

But there's no knowing for certain.

"This is a needle-in-a-haystack thing," said Andre Landry, a marine biology professor at Texas A&M University in Galveston. "It's a difficult situation, pinpointing a cause of death in an animal that may be compromised by decomposition."

___

On the Net:

NOAA Fisheries Service Galveston Laboratory: http://galveston.ssp.nmfs.gov

Kemp's ridley sea turtle: http://www.nps.gov/pais/naturescience/kridley.htm

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[Jolie Rouge]

Because we don't have enough problems .....

Lawyers flock to Gulf Coast for oil spill lawsuits
By Curt Anderson And Thomas Watkins, Associated Press Writers Sat May 1, 1:37 pm ET

MIAMI – Teams of lawyers from around the nation are mobilizing for a gargantuan legal battle over the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, filing multiple lawsuits in recent days that together could dwarf the half-billion dollars awarded in the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago.

If the oil slick fouls popular beaches, ruins fisheries and disrupts traffic on the Mississippi River, attorneys say there could be hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs from Texas to Florida seeking monetary damages from oil producer BP PLC and other companies that ran the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

At least 26 federal lawsuits have been filed since the spill by commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, resort management companies and individual property owners in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Many of the suits claim the disaster was caused when workers for oil services contractor Halliburton Inc. improperly capped a well — a process known as cementing. Halliburton denied that. Investigators are still looking into the cause.

Capt. Mike "Sandbar" Salley, who runs Sure Shot Charters out of Orange Beach, Ala., is one of many fishermen watching helplessly as customers cancel fishing excursions at the start of a busy summer season, in which he makes 80 percent of his income. Salley, 51, is a plaintiff in one of the potential class-action lawsuits seeking to recover damages from the operators of the sunken oil rig. "It's somebody's fault and somebody needs to answer for it," said Salley, who added that his phone and those of other boat captains have been ringing nonstop with lawyers seeking oil-spill clients. "This is going to shut down the entire coast."

Toxic residues remain to this day after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, studies have shown. Thousands of fishermen, cannery workers, landowners and Native Americans were initially awarded $5 billion in punitive damages. That was reduced on appeal to $2.5 billion and then, in 2008, cut down to $507.5 million by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even though the Supreme Court reduced the size of damages, attorneys said the Gulf Coast cases have the potential to be much bigger considering the large coastal population and diverse economy that includes tourism, fishing and shipping industries.

Most of the lawsuits filed so far are potential class-action cases, meaning the plaintiffs seek to represent an entire group of people in similar situations who claim to have suffered economic losses due to company negligence.

Louisiana attorney Daniel Becnel is leading one group of lawyers suing BP, rig owner Transocean Ltd. and companies that had roles in rig operations, such as Cameron International, which produced the rig's blowout preventers.

Becnel said such legal teams are common in large, complex cases because each lawyer brings their own specialties. They also set up committees to screen potential clients and identify the strongest cases. "I want the best brief writers. I want the best deposition takers. I want the best lawyers who can work with experts," said Becnel, who has also been involved in recent Toyota recall and Chinese drywall lawsuits.

Typically when numerous federal lawsuits make similar allegations in different courts, they are consolidated before a single judge who makes key pretrial decisions, such as whether to certify lawsuits as a class action and whether to allow the case to continue to trial.

The companies named as defendants declined comment on the lawsuits, although Transocean did issue a statement saying its "focus remains on meeting the needs of family members during this difficult time" as well as supporting BP in cleanup efforts. Halliburton said in a statement that it was cooperating with the investigation, adding that it was "premature and irresponsible to speculate" on the possible cause of the explosion.

The cases could also impact Lloyd's of London, Transocean's major insurer.

Family members of the 11 men missing and feared dead are also beginning to file lawsuits, which are governed by a special maritime law known as the Death on the High Seas Act.

Natalie Roshto of Amite County, Miss., wife of missing rig worker Shane Roshto, claimed in her lawsuit filed in Louisiana federal court on April 21 that she is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety. Initially, her lawsuit seeks payment of $40 a day since the explosion under what are called "maintenance and cure" benefits provide by those laws.

Troy Wetzel, a 45-year-old charter captain in Venice, La., is among those filing a potential class-action case. He ticked off a list of hardships that began with Hurricane Katrina in 2005, continued with Hurricane Gustav in 2008 and is now capped by the oil spill.

Wetzel said his lawsuit isn't aimed at driving the oil industry out of the Gulf Coast. "We do want oil wells. We love them. It's a giant reef," he said, referring to how fish congregate around rigs. "All we want is for them to clean up their problem before they start drilling any more, and take care of us. If you're going to ruin our environment, you've got to take care of us."



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Comments

Gee lawsuits, that ought to keep the price of oil down.

~~*`*~~

If lawyers are vultures, than I say, let the vultures descend on these earth destroyers who have killed the flesh of millions of living things in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Oil rigs have been operating on the Coast since about 1937. Can we also sue all the governments in the last 70 years who didn't enforce safety or require a disaster plan?


~~*`*~~

Lock and Load! Here come the ambulance chasers and vultures!


~~*`*~~

Quote from a recent news article......"Last year when the Federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP AND OTHER COMPANIES OBJECTED.

The agency is also investigating charges by a whistle-blower that the company DISCARDED IMPORTANT RECORDS from it's Atlantis Gulf oil platform, that were required to be turned in to Federal regulators, as required by law. (New York Times, April 30, 2010, pg. B4, business section).

Didn't we already go through all this with the mega-banks and Wall Street investment firms who have multi-TRILLION dollar international hedge funds which are wealthier than most nations on earth. Over-regulated??.........you have got to be kidding me.

~~*`*~~

and the vultures descend....

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NO doubt Obama is all for the lawyers and lawsuits with him being a radical lawyer himself. He knows nothing about our economy or oil and how important it is to our lifeline as a superpower. He just halted offshore drilling yesterday! DUMB! STUPID! INCOMPETENT. IMPEACH NOW!

~~*`*~~

Will be a Florida victim very soon if BP can't conjure up an adequate remedy. Why would I NOT want to find the best Florida lawyer I could get??? Business is entirely dependent on strong summer tourist traffic, and it has worked nicely for 15+ years. 2010 may be my Waterloo. You pinheads that want to classify all lawyers as ambulance chasers or vultures would reconsider if something negligent caused your business to collapse, or if your property got slimed by a long-term unmanageable oil spill.

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, could move east
By Allen G. Breed And Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Writers 2 hrs 34 mins ago

VENICE, La. – A sense of doom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.

President Barack Obama planned to visit the region Sunday to assess the situation amid growing criticism that the government and oil company BP PLC should have done more to stave off the disaster. Meanwhile, efforts to stem the flow and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or spiking it with chemicals to disperse it continued with little success. "These people, we've been beaten down, disaster after disaster," said Matt O'Brien of Venice, whose fledgling wholesale shrimp dock business is under threat from the spill. "They've all got a long stare in their eye," he said. "They come asking me what I think's going to happen. I ain't got no answers for them. I ain't got no answers for my investors. I ain't got no answers."

He wasn't alone. As the spill surged toward disastrous proportions, critical questions lingered: Who created the conditions that caused the gusher? Did BP and the government react robustly enough in its early days? And, most important, how can it be stopped before the damage gets worse?

The Coast Guard conceded Saturday that it's nearly impossible to know how much oil has gushed since the April 20 rig explosion, after saying earlier it was at least 1.6 million gallons — equivalent to about 2 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The blast killed 11 workers and threatened beaches, fragile marshes and marine mammals, along with fishing grounds that are among the world's most productive.

Even at that rate, the spill should eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.

The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate that oil is spewing from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, it does show an indication of change in growth, experts said. "The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "Clearly, in the last couple of days, there was a big change in the size."

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it was impossible to know just how much oil was gushing from the well, but said the company and federal officials were preparing for the worst-case scenario.

In an exploration plan and environmental impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009, BP said it had the capability to handle a "worst-case scenario" at the Deepwater Horizon site, which the document described as a leak of 162,000 barrels per day from an uncontrolled blowout — 6.8 million gallons each day.

Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like — but if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida, it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.

The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard. "It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."

At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans, a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.

But Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because it is about a mile underwater. "And, in fact, any exact estimation of what's flowing out of those pipes down there is probably impossible at this time due to the depth of the water and our ability to try and assess that from remotely operated vehicles and video," Allen said during a conference call.

The Coast Guard's Allen said Saturday that a test of new technology used to reduce the amount of oil rising to the surface seemed to be successful.

During the test Friday, an underwater robot shot a chemical meant to break down the oil at the site of the leak rather than spraying it on the surface from boats or planes, where the compound can miss the oil slick.

From land, the scope of the crisis was difficult to see. As of Saturday afternoon, only a light sheen of oil had washed ashore in some places.

The real threat lurked offshore in a swelling, churning slick of dense, rust-colored oil the size of Puerto Rico. From the endless salt marshes of Louisiana to the white-sand beaches of Florida, there is uncertainty and frustration over how the crisis got to this point and what will unfold in the coming days, weeks and months.

The concerns are both environmental and economic. The fishing industry is worried that marine life will die — and that no one will want to buy products from contaminated water anyway. Tourism officials are worried that vacationers won't want to visit oil-tainted beaches. And environmentalists are worried about how the oil will affect the countless birds, coral and mammals in and near the Gulf. "We know they are out there" said Meghan Calhoun, a spokeswoman from the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. "Unfortunately the weather has been too bad for the Coast Guard and NOAA to get out there and look for animals for us."

Fishermen and boaters want to help contain the oil. But on Saturday, they were again hampered by high winds and rough waves that splashed over the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast, rendering them largely ineffective. Some coastal Louisiana residents complained that BP, which owns the rig, was hampering mitigation efforts. "I don't know what they are waiting on," said 57-year-old Raymond Schmitt, in Venice preparing his boat to take a French television crew on a tour. He didn't think conditions were dangerous. "No, I'm not happy with the protection, but I'm sure the oil company is saving money."

As bad as the oil spill looks on the surface, it may be only half the problem, said University of California Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety. "There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," said Bea. And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, worries about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, there would be no warning and the resulting gusher could be even more devastating because regulating flow would then be impossible. "When these things go, they go KABOOM," he said. "If this thing does collapse, we've got a big, big blow."

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels — a frightening prospect to many.

[Jolie Rouge]

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said that he has asked both BP and the Coast Guard for detailed plans on how to protect the coast. "We still haven't gotten those plans," said Jindal. "We're going to fully demand that BP pay for the cleanup activities. We're confident that at the end of the day BP will cover those costs."

Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.

As if to cut off mounting criticism, on Saturday White House spokesman Robert Gibbs posted a blog entitled "The Response to the Oil Spill," laying out the administration's day-by-day response since the explosion, using words like "immediately" and "quickly," and emphasizing that Obama "early on" directed responding agencies to devote every resource to the incident and determining its cause.

In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, worked on his boat at the harbor and stared out at the choppy waters. "It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us," Rowell said angrily, rubbing his forehead. "Nobody wants no oily shrimp."

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Comments

Where are all the oily politicians in both parties hiding at? Why haven't they come to save the day? Why haven't they protected America from these greedy corporations that pay the bills for the rock star poltiical elections? Why isn't the oily corporate media really reporting on this? They had no plan to contain something like this which they knew would very well eventually happen before and they don't have one now... the disaster has just begun!

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What an odd coincidence that Halliburton should be the firm doing the work at time of the blow out.... they have their oily fingers into everything....

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Do Sheeple read before commenting on things?? :sheep:

BP was just leasing this rig..

BP has put more effort on Solar panels and Wind farms than any other Oil company in the world..Do your research and quit fallowing the press on all there B.S.

And if thy really wanted to stop ALL this oil pumping into the gulf is to detonate a large and very powerful bomb like a hydrogen bomb on the sea floor where it is coming out and it will seal it..

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BP. Bad track record for 12 or so years at least. Explosions in the Houston metropolitan area, leaks, now this. Can't keep up with damage control. Tragic.

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better now than later when they would have had 1000s of these dangerous wells going for their greedy gain.

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Pollution is bad enough, but the real threat from offshore oil/gas extraction is uncontrollable subsidence of the coast and adjacent continental shelves due to depressurization of pockets of hydrocarbons. Google "Gulf of Mexico floor subsidence".

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Again, no real news reporting. Clumsy kids still trying to blame a BIG BAD corporation. Where is government oversight? Where are reports of actual facts about what caused the explosion?

~~**`**~~


"Where is the government oversight?"

Oh sure, now that there's been a disaster all the right-wingers run around saying the government should have more regulations so this wouldn't have happened. That would be the same government that the rest of the time you don't want to be able to regulate ANYTHING, because after all, corporations always have the public interest at heart -- right?

~~**`**~~

Congrats BP "Bungling Petroleum" your lack of proffesional experiance has done it again! This is just like the disaster at thier Texas City refinery when they did not follow common sense!!!

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf Coast Towns Brace as Huge Oil Slick Nears Marshes
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON - Published: May 1, 2010

COCODRIE, La. — Oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico unabated Saturday, and officials conveyed little hope that the flow could be contained soon, forcing towns along the Gulf Coast to brace for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.

The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as strong winds and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. Officials said the oil could hit the shores of Mississippi and Alabama as soon as Monday.

The White House announced that President Obama would visit the region on Sunday morning.

Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, who is overseeing the Obama administration’s response to the spill, said at a news conference Saturday evening that he could not estimate how much oil was leaking per day from the damaged underwater well. “There’s enough oil out there that it’s logical it’s going to impact the shoreline,” Admiral Allen said.

The imperiled marshes that buffer New Orleans and the rest of the state from the worst storm surges are facing a sea of sweet crude oil, orange as rust. The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, was gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.

The wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta have been losing about 24 square miles a year, deprived of sediment replenishment by levees in the river, divided by channels cut by oil companies and poisoned by farm runoff from upriver. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took large, vicious bites.

The questions that haunt this region are how much more can the wetlands take and does their degradation spell doom for an increasingly defenseless southern Louisiana?

Many variables will dictate just how devastating this slick will ultimately be to the ecosystem, including whether it takes days or months to seal the leaking oil well and whether winds keep blowing the oil ashore. But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together.

Healthy wetlands would have some natural ability to cope with an oil slick, said Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,” she said.

It is possible, she said, that the wetlands’ “tolerance for oil has been compromised.” If so, she said, that could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

To an untrained eye, the vast expanses of grass leading into Terrebonne Bay, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, look vigorous. Locals use boats as cars here, trawling though the marsh for shrimp or casting for plentiful redfish. Out on the water, the air smells like salt — not oil — and seabirds abound and a dolphin makes a swift appearance.

But it is what is not visible that is scary, said Alexander Kolker, a professor of coastal and wetland science at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Piloting a craft through the inland waterways, he pointed out that islands that recently dotted the bay and are still found on local navigation maps are gone. Also gone are the freshwater alligators that gave the nearby town Cocodrie its name — French settlers thought they were crocodiles.

All evidence, he says, is that this land is quickly settling into the salt ocean.

The survival of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is not only an environmental issue here. Since successive hurricanes have barreled up from the gulf unimpeded, causing mass devastation and loss of life, just about every resident of southern Louisiana has begun to view wetlands protection as a cause of existential importance. If the wetlands had been more robust when Hurricane Katrina’s waters pushed up from the ocean, the damage might not have been as severe.

But they were not. Levees holding back the Mississippi River have prevented natural land replenishment from floods. Navigation channels and pipeline canals have brought saltwater into fragile freshwater marshes, slowly killing them, and the sloshing of waves in boats’ wakes has eroded natural banks.

Since 1932, the state has lost an area the size of Delaware. Not all the damage is caused by humans: the hurricanes of 2005 turned about 217 square miles of marsh into water, according to a study by the United States Geological Survey.

Garret Graves, director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, said that since Hurricane Katrina, extraordinary efforts at restoration had been made and, to some extent, had slowed the decline. But, he said, a severe oil dousing would change that. “The vegetation is what holds these islands together,” Mr. Graves said. “When you kill that, you just have mud, and that just gets washed away.”

The imperiled marshes that buffer New Orleans and the rest of the state from the worst storm surges are facing a sea of sweet crude oil, orange as rust. The most recent estimate by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank days later, was gushing as much as 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf each day. Concern is mounting that the flow may soon grow to several times that amount.

The wetlands in the Mississippi River Delta have been losing about 24 square miles a year, deprived of sediment replenishment by levees in the river, divided by channels cut by oil companies and poisoned by farm runoff from upriver. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took large, vicious bites.

The questions that haunt this region are how much more can the wetlands take and does their degradation spell doom for an increasingly defenseless southern Louisiana?

Many variables will dictate just how devastating this slick will ultimately be to the ecosystem, including whether it takes days or months to seal the leaking oil well and whether winds keep blowing the oil ashore. But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together.

Healthy wetlands would have some natural ability to cope with an oil slick, said Denise Reed, interim director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans. “The trouble with our marshes is they’re already stressed, they’re already hanging by a fingernail,” she said.

It is possible, she said, that the wetlands’ “tolerance for oil has been compromised.” If so, she said, that could be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

To an untrained eye, the vast expanses of grass leading into Terrebonne Bay, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, look vigorous. Locals use boats as cars here, trawling though the marsh for shrimp or casting for plentiful redfish. Out on the water, the air smells like salt — not oil — and seabirds abound and a dolphin makes a swift appearance.

But it is what is not visible that is scary, said Alexander Kolker, a professor of coastal and wetland science at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Piloting a craft through the inland waterways, he pointed out that islands that recently dotted the bay and are still found on local navigation maps are gone. Also gone are the freshwater alligators that gave the nearby town Cocodrie its name — French settlers thought they were crocodiles.

All evidence, he says, is that this land is quickly settling into the salt ocean.

The survival of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is not only an environmental issue here. Since successive hurricanes have barreled up from the gulf unimpeded, causing mass devastation and loss of life, just about every resident of southern Louisiana has begun to view wetlands protection as a cause of existential importance. If the wetlands had been more robust when Hurricane Katrina’s waters pushed up from the ocean, the damage might not have been as severe.

But they were not. Levees holding back the Mississippi River have prevented natural land replenishment from floods. Navigation channels and pipeline canals have brought saltwater into fragile freshwater marshes, slowly killing them, and the sloshing of waves in boats’ wakes has eroded natural banks.

Since 1932, the state has lost an area the size of Delaware. Not all the damage is caused by humans: the hurricanes of 2005 turned about 217 square miles of marsh into water, according to a study by the United States Geological Survey.

Garret Graves, director of the Governor’s Office of Coastal Activities, said that since Hurricane Katrina, extraordinary efforts at restoration had been made and, to some extent, had slowed the decline. But, he said, a severe oil dousing would change that. “The vegetation is what holds these islands together,” Mr. Graves said. “When you kill that, you just have mud, and that just gets washed away.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02spill.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama set to visit Gulf on Sunday for spill update
By Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer Sat May 1, 12:28 pm ET

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – President Barack Obama made plans to visit the Gulf Coast on Sunday for a firsthand update on the worst U.S. oil spill in decades and Cabinet members leading the administration's response booked a heavy round of talk show appearances

The White House announced Obama's trip as he headed to the University of Michigan to give the commencement address on Saturday. Word about where the president would go was expected later Saturday. He intended to take a smaller than usual entourage.

The underwater spill remained unstopped and impossible to measure, raising fears it could be pouring more oil into the Gulf than estimated. The Coast Guard estimates that at least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on an offshore rig. In the Exxon Valdez disaster, an oil tanker spilled 11 million gallons off Alaska's shores in 1989.

Obama made no comment about the situation when he boarded a helicopter at the White House for the short flight to Andrews Air Force Base or when he walked on the tarmac to Air Force One. He did not speak to reporters on the flight to Detroit.

Obama has said his administration will do all that it can to battle the spill, which came from a BP exploratory rig. The spill is already the worst in U.S. waters in decades.

Obama has relied on reports from agency chiefs and Coast Guard officials since the magnitude of the spill became clear late Wednesday. Aides report he's been getting regular updates.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano scheduled appearances across the Sunday morning talk shows to detail the administration's efforts in dealing with the environmental disaster. Joining them was the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen.

Deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Obama got another update early Saturday before flying to Ann Arbor. On Friday, Obama ordered Salazar to conduct an immediate review of rig safety in the Gulf and report back within 30 days if any new technologies are needed.

He promised that no new offshore oil drilling leases will be issued unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent a repeat of the explosion that unleashed the massive spill.

"We are going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards," Obama said.

The step, however, was largely symbolic. No such leases are likely to come up for approval for several months, and the review was not expected to interrupt current drilling operations.

The spill came just weeks after Obama announced plans to open up large areas of the Eastern Seaboard and a part of the Gulf for possible future oil drilling. And it's led to increasing calls to reconsider that initiative by environmentalists and coastal state lawmakers.

In his remarks Friday, Obama said he continues "to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security. But I've always said that it must be done responsibly for the safety of our workers and our environment."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100501/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama;_ylt=AplFIqCcISQw_Y6yj4sp_ Jms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlZzduMWszBHBvcwM4NQRzZWMDYWNjb 3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNvYmFtYXNldHRvdmk-

[Jolie Rouge]

Saturday, May 1, 2010
NYT: Obama's response to oil spill could have been quicker
http://www.punditandpundette.com/2010/05/nyt-obamas-response-to-oil-spill-could.html

Don't know whether this is Obama's Katrina or not, but it's no surprise that this incompetent administration isn't up to this job, or any other. The NYT notes the president's slow response to the crisis:


The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful. [emphasis added]

By Friday afternoon, she said, the Defense Department had agreed to send two large military transport planes to spray chemicals that can disperse the oil while it is still in the Gulf.

Someone at the Times is going to pay for putting that assessment, with its fairly mild criticism, into print. The Obami do not care for bad press. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=42A9C609-18FE-70B2-A84A2D8F74C77116

But hey, at least they sent in an army of lawyers! A Sodahead blogger wrote yesterday: http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/barack-obama-battles-looming-environmental-disaster-with-lawyers/blog-311233/


Until today, The Obama Presidency has done nothing more than ordering an irrelevant SWAT team to the area one day ago. But on this 8th day, Obama has finally flung the weight of his administration into action. Did he authorize the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get involved? No. Did he get Homeland Security involved in any meaningful way? No.

So you might ask, what did Obama do to help stop this looming catastrophe? Well, it seems that he has authorized his Justice Department to send a team of lawyers to the Gulf to investigate the feasibility of filing law suits.

Undoubtedly, the Obama Justice Department will create legal Briefs and produce reams of paper. Maybe they will use this paper and lawyers to absorb the oil as it reaches land.

On the other hand, maybe they’re planning on filing suit against the oil itself.

And along with the lawyers, a SWAT team? I don't get it either. http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/05/rush-limbaugh-obama-probably-thinks-tea-party-blew-up-the-rig/

[Jolie Rouge]

Criticism mounts against Obama for government’s handling of the Gulf oil spill
By Pat McMahon - The Daily Caller 05/01/10 at 7:42 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/01/criticism-mounts-against-obama-for-governments-handling-of-the-gulf-oil-spill/

President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the Gulf Coast on Sunday for a firsthand update on the oil spill. (AP Photo/Tony Ding)The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is slowly shaping up to be one of the worst environmental disasters in American history, as well as something of a political disaster for President Obama.

Since April 20, hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil have been released into the Gulf, with little response from the federal government until recently. British Petroleum has been leading the cleanup efforts and attempting to halt the seepage of oil from the bottom of the ocean, but recently revealed that they are unable to complete the task themselves.

As calls for the government to respond to the disaster have grown, President Obama announced today that he would be touring the Gulf Coast region within the next two days.

The New York Times today took aim at the administration’s response to the spill:


“The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP. The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day. The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.”

The Washington Times took a more direct shot at President Obama and the peril that he faces: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/apr/29/expanding-oil-slick-poses-political-peril-obama/


“The rapidly expanding environmental catastrophe caused by the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana is presenting a growing political challenge to the Obama White House, with Mr. Obama and his aides at pains to defend the response and forestall comparisons to the Hurricane Katrina crisis.”
…….

“Failure to get control of the relief effort and contain the environmental challenge could pose the same kind of political threat to Mr. Obama’s popular standing that the much-criticized handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina did for former President George W. Bush. And unlike Katrina, it is likely the federal government will be the clear lead authority in dealing with the BP spill.”

Even liberal stalwarts, like Bill Maher, are unhappy with President Obama’s handling of the oil spill: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/05/01/bill-maher-why-isn-t-barack-obama-getting-more-s-t-oil-spill:


“Okay, so I mentioned in the monologue I’m a little mad this week,” Maher began after introducing his guests. “I’m mad at the oil company who didn’t obviously build their rig well enough,” he continued. “I’m mad at America in general because we should have gotten off the oil tit starting in the ’70s.”

Hold on to you seats: “But I’ll tell you who I’m really mad at which is Barack Obama…So, why isn’t Barack Obama getting more s–t for this?”

[Jolie Rouge]

Saturday, May 01, 2010
'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

20 April 2010: An oil rig rented and operated by BP in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, killing 11 workers.

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: The Deepwater Horizon collapses into the sea and sinks.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

Meanwhile, 200,000 gallons of oil are spilling daily.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

23 April 2010: The oil continues to flow.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/05/obamas-katrina-illustrated-timeline.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil in the Gulf has countless livelihoods in limbo
By Vicki Smith, Associated Press Writer Sun May 2, 7:52 pm ET

HOPEDALE, La. – When Kenny LeFebvre is out of work, so are the two men who help him haul glistening blue crabs from the waters he's fished since he quit school at 14. So are his sister and brother-in-law, who sell him bait, buy back the catch, pack it up, then resell it to buyers who put it on dinner tables in Maryland.

And so are thousands of other families just like theirs in some of the world's richest fishing grounds, livelihoods in limbo as winds from exactly the wrong direction — the southeast — threaten to push an oil slick the size of Puerto Rico ever closer to the fragile, fingerlike bayous. "I don't know what I'll do. I really don't," says LeFebvre, who unloaded 2,100 pounds of crab about 20 minutes before natural resource officials ordered the fishing zones in St. Bernard Parish closed. There was no sign of oil yet. Not even a whiff in the breeze. And the crabs had just started biting.

On Sunday, federal authorities banned commercial and recreational fishing over a wide swath of the Gulf of Mexico, from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle, for at least the next 10 days. Now, the 600 traps LeFebvre dropped Friday morning will sit uncollected for weeks, he figures. Maybe months. Maybe years.

How he will support six children, ages 9 to 18, is beyond his ability to imagine. "I'm 35. I ain't never drove a nail in my life. This is what I know, right here," he says. "We starved all winter, and we was just getting to where we was making money and getting back on our feet."

More than birds and fish lie in the path of the massive oil slick threatening the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas: A centuries-old way of life that's endured dozens of hurricanes is now facing the possibility of environmental and economic disaster.

Water sustains the region's economy like blood in the body. Commercial and sport fishing businesses support dock services, tackle shops and gas stations. Restaurants are Louisiana's largest private-sector employer, with 140,000 workers and a direct annual economic impact of $5 billion. Wendy Waren, vice president of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, says nearly two-thirds of them serve some type of seafood.

Then there are some of the busiest shipping ports in the world, moving oil from offshore rigs up the Mississippi and Midwestern grain out to sea to feed the rest of the world.

All are vital to world commerce and have a potential impact on consumer pocketbooks.

The Port of Gulfport in Mississippi is the nation's second-largest importer of green fruit, with Central American bananas from Chiquita and Dole accounting for 74 percent of its imported cargo in 2007.

The Port of New Orleans handled 73 millions tons of cargo in 2008, including coffee from South America and steel from Japan, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. Three cruise ships also dock there, handling more than 600,000 passengers a year.

Upriver is the Port of South Louisiana, the nation's busiest with 224 million tons of cargo a year — mostly grain and other agricultural commodities, and chemicals from the scores of plants that line the river.

When a tanker and a tugboat collided near New Orleans two years ago, oil cascaded downriver and some 200 ships stacked up, unable to move for several days while the Coast Guard had the vessels scrubbed. Millions of dollars were lost.

About 120 miles away in Ocean Springs, Miss., Paul Nettles worries about losses of his own. He and his partners at South Coast Paddling Co. started their kayaking business last August, taking tourists through inland salt marshes and to some of the barrier islands. "We just spent all year advertising and marketing, and it's just now starting to pay off. If the whole summer is a wash, it could be devastating," says Nettles, 38, preparing to take a dozen highway contractors on a three-hour tour of Old Fort Bayou.

On tiny Grand Isle, which boasts Louisiana's only white sand beaches, the manager of the Island Paradise Suites is also fretting about what could happen this summer. Every weekend, says manager Penny Benton, there's a fishing rodeo that supports the bait shops, eateries and motels. The big one is the tarpon rodeo at the end of July, when so many people pack onto the 6-mile-long island that it takes two hours to drive from one end to the other. "My worst fear is nobody wanting to come down because they can't fish, they can't shrimp, they can't do anything," says Benton, 45, who counts on her job at her aunt's inn to support her 8- and 12-year-old children. "I don't even want to think about that. I know I need to, but I don't want to."

"We're just praying. That's all we can do," she says. "Everybody's scared to death."

Recreational fishing draws some 6 million saltwater anglers a year, supports more than 300,000 jobs and contributes $41 billion dollars annually to the Gulf Coast economy, according to the American Sportfishing Association.

Louisiana is also America's top producer of shrimp, oysters, crabs, crawfish and alligators, shipping out 30 percent all the seafood in the lower 48 states, says Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. That adds up to an economic impact of $2.4 billion a year.

Louisiana fishermen landed 90.4 million pounds of shrimp in 2008, or 44 percent of U.S. production, and 207 million pounds of oysters, or 36 percent of the U.S. total, Smith says. Any hiccup in production opens the door to foreign competition, which already accounts for 80 percent of the nation's seafood consumption.

Just as dangerous? Public perception.

The industry could face consumer misconceptions that all Louisiana products are unsafe, Smith says, even though any contaminated areas will be closed. "The consumer needs to understand we will still have seafood production and have safe seafood production," he says.

Russell Prats, who owns Tino Mones Seafood in Delacroix, sells crabs to processors in Alabama. If he can't supply them, they will look elsewhere, maybe to imports. And they may not come back. "Thousands and thousands of people's lives is at stake here. If that oil comes down and they shut us down, we're out of business," Prats says.

The fishing communities in lower St. Bernard Parish are tiny, quiet villages along a two-lane road, surrounded by marshes. Modest houses sit high on stilts, while travel trailers sit parked in the concrete foundations of homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago. Here, white rubber boots are standard footwear, and the loudest noises come from idling boat engines, screaming seagulls and the unrelenting wind. "How many years is it going to take to clean this up?" wonders fisherman Nicky Alfonso, unloading crates of crabs from his boat on Bayou Terre-aux-Boeufs. "How many years is it going to take for testing on the seafood, before it gets out of their systems? That's something none of us know."

"It's like a hurricane coming: You sit and you wait and see what's gonna happen," he says.

It's gotten steadily harder to make a living here, says 75-year-old Howard Serigne, a lifelong fisherman and a descendant of the Canary Islands settlers who moved into this part of Louisiana in the 1700s.

Everyone in Serigne's family makes a living on the water, but they used to have more options. Once upon a time, he says, they could trap fur-bearing animals like otter and nutria, and sell the pelts. They could catch and sell species of fish now available only to sport fishermen. The number of boats on the water has grown, and the amount of land protecting the fisheries has shrunk.

Serigne had 160 acres in Plaquemines Parish and 64 in St. Bernard before Katrina; now, he says, there's barely any land left.

Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas, says flood control levees have diverted the sediment that builds wetlands across the gulf, while canals cut to reach oil and gas production sites have aggravated erosion. Mineral extraction is causing subsidence, or the gradual lowering of the land.

The wetlands are "in a state of rapid degradation," McKinney says, with 80 percent of the nation's coastal land loss occurring in Louisiana. The state loses up to 25,000 acres, per year, he says — the equivalent of a football field every 20 minutes.

And now this.

"A hurricane takes your house, and it messes up the marsh and that, but it heals pretty quick," says fisherman Tracy Alfonso. "But nobody knows what's gonna happen with the oil. It's never happened before.

"It's like a farmer that can't grow a crop," he says. "How long can you last without work, before they take your house and your car or whatever you work with?"

Wayne and Lisa Ledet, who own Doris' Seafood in Delacroix, earn $500-$1,000 a day when the fishing is good, packing up crabs, oysters and shrimp for buyers in Baltimore. They started their business after Katrina, invested more than $500,000 and just bought an $80,000 ice machine. Some $15,000 worth of bait will go unused because the fishermen are grounded.

Now, the couple is looking at the prospect of taking food stamps to get by. If the shutdown lasts more than a few weeks, they won't be able to pay their bills. "That's it," Wayne says. "It's gonna be over with."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100502/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_what_s_at_stake;_ylt=Aq0bMwpBjIrkkueQ 2DWwMitH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTNjYjBpbmlyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIw MTAwNTAyL3VzX29pbF9zcGlsbF93aGF0X3NfYXRfc3Rha2UEY2 NvZGUDcmFuZG9tBGNwb3MDNgRwb3MDNgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0 b3JpZXMEc2xrA29pbGludGhlZ3VsZg--

[gmyers]

This spill is going to be devastating to jobs in a lot of states.

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil sheen expected at Chandeleur Islands, Sound
Commercial, recreational fishing closed in parts of Gulf
By SANDY DAVIS Advocate staff writer Published: May 2, 2010

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/92626464.html

An oil sheen is expected to slip into Chandeleur Islands and Chandeleur Sound sometime today, the U.S. Coast Guard said. “But it’s been difficult to confirm,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Matt Schofield, a spokesman working in the Joint Information Center. The center, in Robert, is the headquarters for the federal government’s response to the disaster.

The Coast Guard is basing the prediction on information from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, Schofield said.

Bad weather conditions over the Gulf of Mexico have grounded Coast Guard airplanes, Schofield said. “We haven’t been able to do an over-flight since yesterday,” he said. “As soon as we can get up, we will know more.”

NOAA also announced in a news release today that it closed commercial and recreational fishing in the oil-affected portion of the Gulf. But NOAA did not specify the exact region it was closing.

Adding to the frustrations and fears is that no one knows how much oil is leaking into the Gulf or how much oil is on the surface and floating toward Louisiana’s coastal areas.

The estimate provided by BP’s Doug Suttles, chief operation officer for the company, has been 210,000 gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico each day, which equals 5,000 barrels.

A BP official said Sunday that those numbers were estimates and the actual amount of oil gushing from three leaks in a pipe lying on the seabed floor is unknown.

The oil leaks are about 5,000 feet below where the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20 and collapsed two days later.

The depth of water has made measuring or fixing the leaks impossible so far, said Steve Rinehart, a BP spokesman “We don’t know how much oil is on the surface of the water or how much is leaking,” he said. “There is no way to measure the leak at its source,” Rinehart said. “We refined and upgraded the estimate based on accumulated observations over a few days period but there’s really no way to put a number on it.”

Rinehart said crews have had no success stopping the oil flowing from the pipe.

BP plans to have funnel-shaped covers, that were built in Port Fourchon, placed over the leaks within six to eight days, he said. The covers will be connected to pipe, which will allow the leaking oil to flow up to tankers and collected. “This should stop the release of oil,” Rinehart said.

In the meantime, crews are working furiously to lay boom which collects the thicker, heavier oil that has been compared to the consistency of motor oil.

Rinehart said that so far, about 275,000 feet of boom have been placed in the Gulf.

Still, Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is touring the site today with President Barack Obama, said on Saturday that the state deeply concerned. “This is threatening our very way of life,” he said.

The flow of oil is threatening fragile marshes, beaches, marine animals, fishing grounds and the coastline.

---

What the MSM isn't covering is the fact that many of the fishing boats are putting into the water to volenteer their efforts in this. They are not standing around, wringing their hands and having temper tantrums... they are trying to work a solution the only thing they can do.

Fishing now restricted from La. to Fla.
By NOAA PRESS RELEASE Published: May 2, 2010

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/92625229.html

WASHINGTON — NOAA is restricting fishing for a minimum of ten days in federal waters most affected by the BP oil spill, largely between Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Florida’s Pensacola Bay.

The closure is effective immediately. Details can be found at: http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/. Fishermen who wish to contact BP about a claim should call (800) 440-0858.

“NOAA scientists are on the ground in the area of the oil spill taking water and seafood samples in an effort to ensure the safety of the seafood and fishing activities,” said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Administrator, who met with more than 100 fishermen in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish on Friday night.

“There are finfish, crabs, oysters and shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico near the area of the oil spill,” said Roy Crabtree, NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Administrator. “The Gulf is such an important biologic and economic area in terms of seafood production and recreational fishing.”

According to NOAA, there are 3.2 million recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico region who took 24 million fishing trips in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than 1 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008.

NOAA is working with the state governors to evaluate the need to declare a fisheries disaster in order to facilitate federal aid to fishermen in these areas. NOAA fisheries representatives in the region will be meeting with fishermen this week to assist them.

The states of Louisiana and Mississippi have requested NOAA to declare a federal fisheries disaster. BP will be hiring fishermen to help clean up from the spill and deploy boom in the Gulf of Mexico. Interested fishermen should call (425) 745-8017.

NOAA will continue to evaluate the need for fisheries closures based on the evolving nature of the spill and will re-open the fisheries as appropriate. NOAA will also re-evaluate the closure areas as new information that would change the dimension of these closed areas becomes available.

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama says stopping oil spill could take many days
By Robert Burns And Steven R. Hurst, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 35 mins ago

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID25803/images/2010-05-02_063448.jpg

VENICE, La. – No remedy in sight, President Barack Obama on Sunday warned of a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster" as a badly damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico spewed a widening and deadly slick toward delicate wetlands and wildlife. He said it could take many days to stop.

Obama flew to southern Louisiana to inspect forces arrayed against the oil gusher as Cabinet members described the situation as grave and insisted the administration was doing everything it could. Then he took a 15-mile helicopter ride over marshlands and estuaries to a coastal area, but high winds prevented the craft from going out to the 30-mile oil slick caused by as much as 210,000 gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf each day.

The spill threatened not only the environment but also the region's abundant fishing industry, which Obama called "the heartbeat of the region's economic life." As of now, it appeared little could be done in the short term to stem the oil flow, which was also drifting toward the beaches of neighboring Mississippi and farther east along the Florida Panhandle. Obama said the slick was 9 miles off the coast of southeastern Louisiana.

Those who live and work in the region braced for the economic impact on fishing and tourism. In front of a cabin and RV park in Boothville, along Louisiana Highway 23, was a plywood sign pleading: "Obama Send Help."

BP Chairman Lamar McKay raised faint hope that the spill might be stopped more quickly by lowering a hastily manufactured dome to the ruptured wellhead a mile deep in the next six to eight days, containing the oil and then pumping it to the surface. Such a procedure has been used in some well blowouts but never at the mile-deep waters of this disaster.

The leaking well was not only an ecological disaster but a potential political hazard, as well, depending on how the public judges the Obama administration's response. In 2005, President George W. Bush stumbled in dealing with Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf and left the impression of a president distant from immense suffering. His presidency never recovered.

An investigation is under way into the cause of the April 20 well explosion and, depending on its outcome, questions may be raised about whether federal regulation of offshore rigs operating in extremely deep waters is sufficient and whether the government is requiring the best available technology to shut off such wells in event of a blowout.

The president vowed that his administration, while doing all it could to mitigate the disaster, would require well owner BP America to bear all costs. "Your government will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this crisis," he said.

"BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," Obama said after a Coast Guard briefing in Venice, a Gulf Coast community serving as a staging area for the response. He stood before cameras in a heavy rain, water dripping from his face.

The president also stopped to talk with six local fishermen and said the challenge is "How do we plug this hole?" After that, he said, protecting the estuaries would be the next priority.

"We're going to do everything in our power to protect our natural resources, compensate those who have been harmed, rebuild what has been damaged and help this region persevere like it has done so many times before," Obama said.

Arriving in New Orleans, the president shunned helicopter travel because of a threat of tornadoes and drove to Venice to tour a close-to-the-water staging area where the government and BP were trying to keep the slick from causing even more damage.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said any comparison between the ruptured BP oil well and Katrina was "a total mischaracterization" and that the government had taken an "all hands on deck" approach from the beginning.

Administration officials have been at pains to explain that Obama's late March decision to expand offshore oil exploration could be altered as a result of the spill and that stricter safety rules would doubtless be written into leases.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100503/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama;_ylt=AlwmetKnzN0e2TAK4_Z4F Pus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoMHRpOTY0BHBvcwMyNQRzZWMDYWNjb 3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNvYmFtYXNheXNzdG8-

[Jolie Rouge]

Deepwater Horizon 24Hr Trajectory Map 2010-05-02-1200
The 24 hour trajectory forecast prepared on May 2 at 12:00pm.

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/art_gallery/1473_TM-2010-05-01-2314-icon.jpg

Deepwater Horizon Cumulative Trajectory Map 2010-05-02
Approximate oil locations from April 28, 2010 to May 2, 2010 based on trajectories and overflight information including forecast for May 3.

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/art_gallery/1475_TMF24-2010-05-02-1200-icon.jpg

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/topic_subtopic_entry.php?RECORD_KEY(entry_subtopic _topic)=entry_id,subtopic_id,topic_id&entry_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=809&subtopic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=2&topic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=1#downloads

[Jolie Rouge]

[b]BP says it will pay for Gulf spill's cleanup
By HOLBROOK MOHR and ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writers Holbrook Mohr And Allen G. Breed, Associated Press Writers 44 mins ago
VENICE, La. – BP PLC said Monday that it will pay for all the cleanup costs from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that could continue spewing crude for at least another week.

The company posted a fact sheet on its Web site saying it took responsibility for the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill and would pay compensation for legitimate claims for property damage, personal injury and commercial losses.

"We are responsible, not for the accident, but we are responsible for the oil and for dealing with it and cleaning the situation up," chief executive Tony Hayward said Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America." He said the equipment that failed on the rig and led to the spill belonged to owner Transocean Ltd., not BP, which operated the rig.

Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, responded by reading a statement without elaborating.

"We will await all the facts before drawing conclusions and we will not speculate," he said.

Meanwhile, Hayward said chemical dispersants seem to be having a significant impact keeping oil from flowing to the surface, though he did not elaborate.

The update on the dispersants came as BP was preparing a system never tried nearly a mile under water to siphon away the geyser of crude from a blown-out well a mile underwater. However, the plan to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes being built to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge waiting at the surface will need at least another six to eight days to get it in place.

Officials also were trying to cap one of the three leaks to make it easier to place the first box on the sea floor.

Crews continued to lay boom in what increasingly feels like a futile effort to slow down the spill, though choppy seas have made that difficult and rendered much of the oil-corraling gear useless.

"I've been in Pensacola and I am very, very concerned about this filth in the Gulf of Mexico," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign Sunday night. "It's not a spill, it's a flow. Envision sort of an underground volcano of oil and it keeps spewing over 200,000 gallons every single day, if not more."

Fishermen from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle got the news that more than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas were closed, fracturing their livelihood for at least 10 days and likely more just as the prime spring season was kicking in. The slick also was precariously close to a key shipping lane that feeds goods and materials to the interior of the U.S. by the Mississippi River.

Even if the well is shut off in a week, fishermen and wildlife officials wonder how long it will take for the Gulf to recover. Some compare it to Hurricane Katrina, which Louisiana is still recovering from after nearly five years.

"My kids will be talking about the effect of this when they're my age," said 41-year-old Venice charter boat captain Bob Kenney.

Everything engineers have tried so far has failed. After the April 20 oil rig explosion, which killed 11 people, the flow of oil should have been stopped by a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed. Efforts to remotely activate it have proven fruitless.

The oil could keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to relieve pressure from the first.

Besides the immediate impact on Gulf industries, shipping along the Mississippi River could soon be limited. Ships carrying food, oil, rubber and much more come through the Southwest Pass to enter the vital waterway.

Shipment delays — either because oil-splattered ships need to be cleaned off at sea before docking or because water lanes are shut down for a time — would raise the cost of transporting those goods.

"We saw that during Hurricane Katrina for a period of time — we saw some prices go up for food and other goods because they couldn't move some fruit down the shipping channels and it got spoiled," PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said.

The Port of New Orleans said projections suggest the pass will be clear through Tuesday.

President Barack Obama toured the region Sunday, deflecting criticism that his administration was too slow to respond and did too little to stave off the catastrophe.

A piece of plywood along a Louisiana highway had these words painted on it: "OBAMA SEND HELP!!!!"

The blessing of the boats is normally a joyous kickoff to the spring fishing season in St. Bernard Parish. But this year, it had more the air of a funeral.

Some years, as many as 200 craft, most of them working boats, lined up at the Gulf Outlet Marina to be sprinkled with holy water by a priest. On Sunday, only four boats floated by — and not one a commercial vessel.

Capt. Doogie Robin, 84, sat at a bar, sipping a Budweiser from the jaws of an alligator-head beer cozy. He runs eight oyster boats.

"Katrina really hit us hard," he said. "And this here, I think this is going to finish us now. I think this will wipe us off the map."

The Coast Guard and BP have said it's nearly impossible to know exactly how much oil has gushed since the blast, though it has been roughly estimated to be at least 200,000 gallons a day.

At that rate, it would eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which dumped 11 million gallons off the Alaska coast — as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks.

Even if the oil stays mostly offshore, the consequences could be dire for sea turtles, dolphins and other deepwater marine life — and microscopic plankton and tiny creatures that are a staple of larger animals' diets.

Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., said at least 20 dead sea turtles were found on the state's beaches. He said it's too soon to say whether oil contamination killed them but that it is unusual to have them turning up across such a wide stretch of coast, nearly 30 miles.

Some experts also have said oil could get into the Gulf Stream and flow to the beaches of Florida — and potentially whip around the state's southern tip and up the Eastern Seaboard. Tourist-magnet beaches and countless wildlife could be ruined.

Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.

[Jolie Rouge]

The containment boxes being built were not part of BP's original response plan. The approach has been used previously only for spills in relatively shallow water. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said engineers are still examining whether the valves and other systems that feed oil to a ship on the surface can withstand the extra pressures of the deep.

BP was trying to cap the smallest of three leaks with underwater robots in the hope it will make it easier to place a single oil-siphoning container over the wreck. One of the robots cut the damaged end off a pipe at the smallest leak Sunday and officials were hoping to cap it with a sleeve and valve, Coast Guard spokesman Brandon Blackwell said Monday. He did not know how much oil was coming from that leak. "We see this as an opportunity to simplify the seafloor mission a little bit, so we're working this aggressively," BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said.

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the seabed the Deepwater Horizon rig was tapping when it exploded. A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels. Bob Fryar, senior vice president for BP in Angola, said any numbers being thrown out are just estimates at best.

Peter Young has worked nearly 18 years as a fishing guide and said he's afraid his way of life may be slipping away. The government has overreacted by shutting down vital fishing areas in the marshes, he said.

Until he sees oil himself, Young will keep fishing the closed areas. "They can take me to jail," he said. "This is our livelihood. I'm not going to take customers into oil, but until I see it, I can't sit home and not work."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100503/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill?cmtnav=/mwphucmtgetnojspage/headcontent/main/apus_gulf_oil_spill/na/date/asc/9041



9,047 Comments

This REALLY sickens me! Even with all of our technological advances in security, safety, and protection we still cannot avoid an oil spill. Just think of all the poor animals that are dying and that ARE going to die as a result of this stupidity!!! I've been told I'm sick in the head when I say this but I don't give a rats a$$ when I'd rather see a human being die from such stupidity than an innocent little animal!

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I think I will boycot our BP filling station

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BP says it will pay for the Gulf spill gosh that was so nice of them. DUH.... who the hell else did they think was going to pay for it the tax payers, i don't think so.

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WITH THE CAR BOMB IN NY AND THE OIL DISASTER OBAMA HOPES THE PRESSURE OF ILLEGAL IMMEGRATION WILL BE FOREGOTTEN!!! I WONDER IF OBAMA'S CREW HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THESE TWO INCIDENTS? HUM HUM HUM

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There is talk of recovery estimates. How can they put a number of years or decades it will take to recover. What is a full recovery in the analysts's opinion? Unless every drop of oil is removed from the ocean and all species of affected wildlife are at good population numbers then how is it a recovery. I dont understand how this area or any area that has been through this can ever recover. Are you going to tell me that Alaska has recovered from Valdez. Is it safe to eat salmon and halibut from this area. Can salmon and halibut live in this area. Who will decide that the clean up effort is "good enough." Good enough for who. The clean up effort will only be as good as the amount of money the Feds will require BP to spend and then they will say "Good enough boys. Go on home to your families. I am sorry Florida and Louisiansa that is the end of the show. America is stuck in a dependance on oil that is gradually ruining the world. It is our own fault but there is no fast and easy answer. Driving more fuel efficient cars is is a bandide on a broken leg. Nuclear energy could help.

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they should just dump dawn all over the ocean to break up the oil and use some tide 2X to clean it up and to clean the animals.

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That is so considerate of them...


A couple of comments on the comments :


I am sorry Florida and Louisiansa that is the end of the show

Did you flunk geography ?? Include Mississippi and Alabama .... and if it plays out the "WCS" Texas, Mexico, Georgia, the Carolinas, the Caribean ...



u]I've been told I'm sick in the head when I say this but I don't give a rats a$$ when I'd rather see a human being die from such stupidity than an innocent little animal![/u]

I agree - you are sick in the head :puke:


who the hell else did they think was going to pay for it the tax payers, i don't think so.

Well, yeah ... Exxon passed the cost of the expense of the clean up and fines levied against them to consumers... and the rest of the industry raised their prices to match Exxxons ... because they could.

[Jolie Rouge]

Attention shoppers: Gulf spill could affect you
By Harry R. Weber And Vicki Smith, Associated Press Writers 2 hrs 23 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn't just a mess for the people who live or work on the coast. If you drink coffee, eat shrimp, like bananas or plan to buy a new set of tires, you could end up paying more because of the disaster.

The slick has forced the shutdown of the gulf's rich fishing grounds and could also spread to the busy shipping lanes at the mouth of the Mississippi River, tying up the cargo vessels that move millions of tons of fruit, rubber, grain, steel and other commodities and raw materials in and out of the nation's interior.

Though a total shutdown of the shipping lanes is unlikely, there could be long delays if vessels are forced to wait to have their oil-coated hulls power-washed to avoid contaminating the Mississippi.

Some cargo ships might choose to unload somewhere else in the U.S. That could drive up costs. "Let's say it gets real bad. It gets blocked off and they don't let anything in. They lose time, and they are very concerned about that," said river pilot Michael Lorino. "It's going to be very costly if they have to unload that cargo in another port and ship it back here because it was destined for here."

When a tanker and a tugboat collided near New Orleans two years ago, oil cascaded down the river and some 200 ships stacked up, unable to move for several days while the Coast Guard had the vessels scrubbed. Millions of dollars were lost.

Several river boat pilots said the edge of the oil slick Monday was 15 to 20 miles off the Southwest Pass, where ships headed to New Orleans enter the Mississippi. The latest satellite image of the slick, taken Sunday night, indicates that it has shrunk since last week, but that only means some of the oil has gone underwater.

The new image found oil covering about 2,000 square miles, rather than the roughly 3,400 square miles observed last Thursday, said Hans Graber of the University of Miami.

The new image also shows that sizable patches have broken away and are moving to the north and east, Graber said.

Crews have been struggling to stop the more than 200,000 gallons a day spewing from the sea after an offshore drilling platform blew up and sank last month in a disaster that killed 11 workers. The accident is the worst U.S. oil spill since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska, leaking nearly 11 million gallons of crude.

Chemical dispersants seemed to be helping to keep oil from floating to the surface, but crews haven't been able to activate a shutout valve underwater. And it could take another week before a 98-ton concrete-and-metal box is placed over one of the leaks to capture the oil.

More ominously, it could take three months to drill sideways into the well and plug it with mud and concrete.

BP said Monday it would compensate people for "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims from the explosion and spill, but President Barack Obama and others pressed the company to explain exactly what that means.

By all accounts, the disaster is certain to cost BP billions. But analysts said the company could handle it; BP is the world's third-largest oil company and made more than $6 billion in the first three months of this year. The oil spill has drained $32 billion from BP's stock market value.

Restaurants, hotels, casinos and other coastal businesses from Florida to Texas are bracing for their own pain.

Dana Powell expects at least some lost business at the Paradise Inn in Pensacola Beach, Fla., and could see a different type of guest altogether: Instead of families boating, parasailing and fishing, workers on cleanup crews will probably be renting her rooms. "They won't be having as much fun," she said, "but they might be buying more liquor at the bar, because they'll be so depressed."

And what will she serve in her restaurant? Hamburgers and chicken fingers instead of crab claws. Federal officials have shut down fishing for at least 10 days from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle.

In the Chandeleur Sound on Monday, about 40 miles northeast of Venice, La., thick, heavy oil formed long clumps that looked like raw sewage. Dying jellyfish could be seen in the water. A dolphin surfaced nearby but did not appear to be in distress.

The news was better from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle, where the sheen isn't expected to touch beaches before Thursday. Wind and sea currents have helped to keep the oil away from points farther west, said Coast Guard Capt. Steve Poulin.

Hundreds of Coast Guard crews, private vessels and others are working offshore fighting to keep the slick at bay.

Poulin used a map that projected what people can expect to see when the oil begins to hit. The outermost layer will include sticky tar balls that can adhere to bird feathers and accumulate in grasses and marshes. The next layer will have bigger pancakes of emulsified oil.

In Alabama, scores of shrimp boats sat at dock in Bayou La Batre, their crews unable to work. Vietnamese immigrant Minh V. Le, who owns two trawlers, said: "I'm confused about how I'm going to survive, and how my crews are."

The Port of New Orleans handled 73 millions tons of cargo in 2008, including coffee from South America and steel from Japan, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. More than 245,000 tons of coffee came through the port in 2008, second only to the New York-New Jersey port. And last year, it imported nearly 260,000 tons of rubber from such countries as Indonesia and Malaysia, making it nation's No. 1 gateway for natural rubber.

Upriver is the Port of South Louisiana, the nation's busiest port with 224 million tons of cargo a year — mostly grain, other agricultural commodities and chemicals. Farther east lies Mississippi's Port of Gulfport, the nation's second-largest importer of green fruit. Central American bananas from Chiquita and Dole account for a big chunk of its cargo.

Some businesses were prepared because of their experience during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Folgers Coffee Co., which ships its coffee through the Port of New Orleans, has several weeks' worth of green coffee on hand and has made arrangements to use other ports in the event of a shutdown, spokeswoman Mary Beth Badertscher said.

"We've learned a lot of valuable lessons from Hurricane Katrina about supply logistics," she said.

About 60 percent of the grain exported from the U.S. goes through the Southwest Pass. If the spill delays barge traffic going down the Mississippi, prices for corn, soybeans and wheat could rise quickly on global markets, said Greg Wagner, a commodity analyst.

Grain prices within the U.S. could actually fall if shipments are unable to leave the U.S. and the grain begins piling up at silos in the U.S. But the price decreases would probably be small and wouldn't show up at the grocery store anytime soon, said Seth Meyer, an agricultural transportation analyst at the University of Missouri.

While a port shutdown would be devastating to the Gulf Coast region, many economists believe the overall damage to the $14.6 trillion U.S. economy could be small.

Cargo can be rerouted to other ports, and the income would be shifted but not lost. Even the lost income from tourism and fishing could be offset by more spending on cleanup.

"The U.S. economy is adaptable," said Martin Regalia, chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "When natural disasters strike, money may be lost in one area but can be made up by spending in other areas. It is more than a nuisance, but it is not a calamity in an economic sense."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf Oil Spill: BP Enlists Hard-Hit Fishermen in Cleanup
By Steven Gray / Hopedale 5 mins ago

On Sunday, Charles Robin III, a fifth-generation shrimper on the Louisiana coast, sat in the cabin of his 52-foot boat, Ellie Margaret, and carefully contemplated his future. It's bleak. Millions of gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico are just miles south of his home in Hopedale, on the Mississippi River delta. Already, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has banned fishing in the area for at least the next nine days in the waters east of Hopedale and all the way to Florida. "Katrina dug a hole for us," he said that afternoon, sipping a glass of sweet tea. "We're laying in this grave, trying to get out of this hole, and this spill comes along."

The Gulf Coast's residents are accustomed to keeping an eye on the water, especially around June 1, the start of hurricane season. The past few days have been like watching the arrival of an oily storm. The wounds from Hurricane Katrina are still raw, especially in Hopedale, a fishing village in St. Bernard parish, about an hour's drive south of New Orleans. The parish, as counties are called in Louisiana, was among the hardest hit by Katrina. Floodwater from the Gulf of Mexico covered the swampy terrain. The recovery has been slow; the population has come back up to 40,655, nearly two-thirds of its pre-Katrina level. New homes are being built on stilts, between 30 and 50 feet above two-lane roads sometimes covered with swamp water. There's a new Wal-Mart, and outposts of the Dollar Store.

The parish's president, Craig Taffaro Jr., says, "It's enormously important that we don't have another disaster that would cause us to slow down." The loss will certainly be massive, if and when the oil reaches the shores of St. Bernard parish. That is likely to trigger losses of at least $1.5 million a month in the parish's seafood industry. That doesn't include losses in related industries: suppliers of nets, for instance, and hotels for recreational fishermen.

Soon after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP that sent oil gushing into the Gulf, Taffaro began drafting plans to protect his parish's waters. First, he set up a station of two large white tents along the bank of a bayou. From there, he hoped, local fisherman would bring boatloads of boom - the orange tubes used as barriers to prevent the oil's spread - into Bretton Bay, an estuary for shrimp leading out to the Gulf. Local fishermen were ready to volunteer to lay boom. Robin, the shrimper, recalls saying, "We can stop this. Let's catch it before it destroys our estuaries."

BP officials arrived midday Saturday, with thousands of feet of boom. On Saturday alone, more than 17,000 feet of boom were laid by local fishermen and shrimpers. But even that wasn't enough. Now, parish officials are negotiating the terms of contracts that will be offered to local fishermen for the use of boats and to work as crew members laying boom. "It's a win-win," Taffaro says, because "it puts people hurt by this directly to work."

There's some reason to be concerned about the contracts, though. Late yesterday, the U.S. Labor Department warned that cleanup workers face potential hazards from oil by-products, dispersants, detergents and degreasers. The government began distributing guides in English, Vietnamese and Spanish. Robin and others aren't sold on the BP contract. "We don't know how this thing is going to ruin us," he says. The rumored terms of a contract - about $2,000 per day, for the boat and crew - may not be enough to cover the $8,000 he'd have made on a good day during shrimping season, which usually begins in early spring.

The experience of Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in the town of Venice, La., just to the south of Hopedale, may be instructive. On Saturday, Swift attended one of the many recruiting sessions BP is hosting in high school gymnasiums and churches in fishing communities along the northern Gulf Coast. He picked up a contract that apparently offered to pay $2,000 per day for a 45-foot boat to be used exclusively for laying boom. There's talk, he says, that some of the contracts being negotiated will force fishermen to waive their right to sue BP. And he's not sure how long the contracts will last. Nevertheless, on Sunday, he submitted the signed contract to the local BP office. Now, he says, "I really don't know what I signed." He didn't send a copy to a lawyer friend in Illinois, or keep one for himself. BP officials have yet to call him. Now there's no fishing in the Gulf - by government orders. So, on Tuesday, he plans to take his boat onto the Mississippi River. "The fish in that river are still good," he says. "No oil's gotten in there."

Thankfully, not yet.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Paranoia, anxiety grow over Gulf Coast oil spill
By Vicki Smith And Allen G. Breed, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 44 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – People along the Gulf Coast have spent weeks living with uncertainty, wondering where and when a huge slick of oil might come ashore, ruining their beaches — and their livelihoods.

The anxiety is so acute that some are seeing and smelling oil where there is none. And even though the dead turtles and jellyfish washing ashore along the Gulf of Mexico are clean, and scientists have yet to determine what killed them, many are just sure the flow of crude unleashed by the explosion at BP's Deepwater Horizon is the culprit.

Calm seas Tuesday helped cleanup crews working to fight the oil gushing from the well a mile below the surface, allowing them to put out more containment equipment and repair some booms damaged in rough weather over the weekend. They also hoped to again try to burn some of the oil on the water's surface, possibly Wednesday.

The Marine Spill Response Corp. had five, 210-foot vessels designed for oil skimming operating offshore Tuesday. Three more were at sea preparing to lower their equipment so they could suck up oil as well.

A Coast Guard official said forecasts showed the oil wasn't expected to come ashore until at least Thursday. "It's a gift of a little bit of time. I'm not resting," U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said.

Near Port Fourchon, southwest of New Orleans, workers for contractor Wild Well Control were busy welding and painting a massive containment device. BP spokesman John Curry said it would be deployed on the seabed by Thursday.

That wasn't much comfort to the hotel owners, fishing boat captains and others who rely on the ocean to make a living. "The waiting is the hardest part. The not knowing," said Dodie Vegas, 44, who runs the Bridge Side Cabins complex in Grand Isle, a resort and recreational fishing community that's just about as far south in Louisiana as you can go. So far, two fishing rodeos have been canceled, and 10 guests have canceled their rooms.

The Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and sending hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day gushing into the Gulf.

BP executives told members of a congressional committee that in a worst-case scenario, up to 2.5 million gallons a day could spill, though it would be more like 1.7 million gallons.

While a rainbow sheen of oil has reached land in parts of Louisiana, the gooey rafts of coagulated crude have yet to come ashore in most places.

Officials couldn't confirm reports that some of it reached the delicate Chandeleur Islands off the coast of Louisiana on Tuesday. The Associated Press reported oil had come ashore at the mouth of the Mississippi last week.

While officials worked on cleanup, the long wait took its toll — on nerves and wallets. "It's aggravating, to a point," said Frank Besson, 61, owner of Nez Coupe Souvenir & Tackle. "You got people canceling out, thinking we've got oil on the beaches, and it's not even at the mouth of the Mississippi."

Over the weekend, residents on Florida's Navarre Beach thought they saw an oily sheen in the surf. When a dead bird washed up, that only reinforced their fears.

Reporters, lifeguards and the Navarre Fire Department descended on the beach. Community officials eventually declared what washed ashore was just "a natural occurrence."

The Environmental Protection Agency stepped up air quality monitoring on the Gulf Coast after people in New Orleans and elsewhere reported a strong odor of petroleum. A throng standing on the beach in Gulfport, Miss., Saturday were convinced they could smell the slick — until someone pointed out a big diesel truck idling just 50 feet away.

When the truck left, so did the smell.

Dr. Timothy F. Jones, deputy state epidemiologist with the Tennessee Department of Health, witnessed a similar phenomenon in his own state.

In 1998, Jones investigated a case in which reports of a funny smell at a high school blossomed into a wave of nausea, dizziness, headaches and drowsiness that sent 170 people to area hospitals, shut down the school for more than two weeks and eventually cost nearly $100,000 in emergency medical care. Officials never were able to identify a physical source, viral or chemical, leading to the conclusion that the cause was most likely psychological. "They're often associated with lots of media and lots of attention," Jones said of these events. "They often occur in populations under stress."

That certainly describes the current spill and the perennially beleaguered communities along the Gulf Coast.

Fishermen have complained bitterly about the federal decision to close a large swath of the Gulf to commercial and sport fishing, saying it was an overreaction. Some even vowed to keep catching fish until someone arrested them.

But U.S. Sen. David Vitter said it was necessary to reassure the American public that the seafood on restaurant menus and store shelves is safe. "We don't want hysteria to take over and hysteria to hurt the industry even more than the oil is," said Vitter, R-La.

Daryl Carpenter, president of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association, is struggling to get people to understand that three-quarters of the Gulf is still clean and open to fishing.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., the real estate firm Brett/Robinson Vacations, sent a note to those renting vacation properties that they would not be penalized for any spill-related cancellations, but urged them not to jump the gun. "There are many questions and many `what ifs' regarding this event," the message read. "Because changes come about hourly and 30 days is a long way away, we are asking you to wait before canceling your vacation, especially those of you who are scheduled to arrive more than 30 days from today."

The missive concluded with the words: "Thank you for staying with us and enjoying our beautiful Beaches."

There are legitimate concerns, experts say. A second bird found in the slick, a brown pelican, is recovering at a bird rescue center in Louisiana. National Wildlife Federation president and CEO Larry Schweiger says there's no way to know how many birds have been oiled because the slick is so big and so far offshore.

A decade ago when Jan Grant and her husband bought their little piece of paradise on St. George Island, Fla., bound by Apalachicola Bay on one side and the Gulf on the other, they never worried that the white sand 200 yards in front of the hotel could be covered in oil. Their St. George Inn is booked full the next two weekends, and Grant is taking reservations into the summer, but travelers are already calling about the spill. "You mentally want to push it back to the west, and then you feel guilty for doing so," Jan Grant said. "All we're doing is holding our collective breath," echoed Stella Banta, who was taking similar calls at Coombs Inn in Apalachicola's brick-lined historic district.

Idling his 28-foot charter boat in the lee of Louisiana's pristine Chandeleur Islands, Bob Kenney looked over the gunwales to see dozens of dead baby jellyfish floating along the hull. Off in the distance, the collections of thick, reddish-brown goo looked for all the world like little islands — except that they were moving. "There's no sense in telling me the impact until you get the oil shut off," said the 41-year-old boat captain, who has already lost a half-dozen charters from people worried about fishing in the tainted Gulf.

Amid all the speculation surrounding the spill, the one thing that seemed certain was that life would never be the same. "You know change is a-comin' after this, bro," he said, shaking his head ruefully. "You can't keep doing this kind of stuff to Mother Ocean."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Giant dome for Gulf oil leak is next best solution
By Vicki Smith And Allen G. Breed, Associated Press Writers 55 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The best short-term solution to bottling up a disastrous oil spill threatening sealife and livelihoods along the Gulf Coast should be arriving on Wednesday in the form of a specially built giant concrete-and-steel box designed to siphon the oil away.

Crews for contractor Wild Well Control were putting the finishing touches Tuesday on the 100-ton containment dome. A barge at about midday would haul the contraption to the spot 50 miles offshore where a mile-deep gusher from a blown-out undersea well has been spewing at least 210,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf for two weeks. BP spokesman John Curry said it would be deployed on the seabed by Thursday.

It's the latest idea that engineers from oil giant BP PLC were trying since an oil rig the company was operating exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. It sank two days later, when the oil started pouring into the Gulf. BP is in charge of the cleanup and President Barack Obama and many others say the company also is responsible for the costs.

A rainbow sheen of oil has reached land in parts of Louisiana, but the gooey rafts of coagulated crude have yet to come ashore in most places. Forecasts showed the oil wasn't expected to come ashore until at least Thursday.

"It's a gift of a little bit of time. I'm not resting," U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said.

In their worst-case scenario, BP executives told members of a congressional committee that up to 2.5 million gallons a day could spill if the leaks worsened, though it would be more like 1.7 million gallons.

Containment domes have never been tried at this depth — about 5,000 feet — because of the extreme water pressure. The dome, if all goes well, could be fired up early next week to start funneling the oil into a tanker.

"We don't know for sure" whether the equipment will work, said BP spokesman Bill Salvin. "What we do know is that we have done extensive engineering and modeling and we believe this gives us the best chance to contain the oil, and that's very important to us."

The seas calmed Tuesday allowing more conventional methods to contain the spill to get back on track as businesses and residents kept an eye on the ocean currents, wondering when the sheen washing ashore in places might turn into a heavier coating of oil. Crews put out more containment equipment and repaired some booms damaged in rough weather over the weekend. They also hoped to again try to burn some of the oil on the water's surface, possibly Wednesday.

Chemical dispersants piped 5,000 feet to the main leak have significantly reduced the amount of oil coming to the surface, BP said. The company also hoped to shut off one of the smaller of three leaks though it might not reduce the flow much, said Doug Suttles, BP PLC's chief operating officer.

From the air Tuesday, the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion looked similar to a week ago except for the appearance of a massive rig brought in to drill a relief well to shut off the spewing oil. That would take months, however.

Across the accident zone, oil floated in the ocean in different hues, shapes and textures. In places, it was a rich paisley patterned reds and oranges. In others, it took on varying gray and blue striated shapes, almost like a Vincent Van Gogh's thick brush strokes.

People along the Gulf Coast have spent weeks living with uncertainty, wondering where and when that huge slick might come ashore, ruining their beaches — and their livelihoods.

The anxiety is so acute that some are seeing and smelling oil where there is none. And even though the dead turtles and jellyfish washing ashore along the Gulf of Mexico are clean, and scientists have yet to determine what killed them, many are just sure the flow of crude unleashed by the explosion at BP's Deepwater Horizon is the culprit.

The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. Some of the 115 surviving workers who were aboard when it exploded are suing that company and BP PLC. In lawsuits filed Tuesday, three workers say they were kept floating at sea for more than 10 hours while the rig burned uncontrollably. They are seeking damages.

Guy Cantwell, a spokesman for rig owner Transocean Ltd., defended the company's response, saying 115 workers did get off alive. Two wrongful death suits also have been filed.

While officials worked on cleanup, the long wait took its toll on nerves and incomes.

"It's aggravating, to a point," said Frank Besson, 61, owner of Nez Coupe Souvenir & Tackle. "You got people canceling out, thinking we've got oil on the beaches, and it's not even at the mouth of the Mississippi."

Fishermen have complained bitterly about the federal decision to close a large swath of the Gulf to commercial and sport fishing, saying it was an overreaction. Some even vowed to keep catching fish until someone arrested them.

But U.S. Sen. David Vitter said it was necessary to reassure the American public that the seafood on restaurant menus and store shelves is safe.

"We don't want hysteria to take over and hysteria to hurt the industry even more than the oil is," said Vitter, R-La.

Daryl Carpenter, president of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association, is struggling to get people to understand that three-quarters of the Gulf is still clean and open to fishing.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., the real estate firm Brett/Robinson Vacations, sent a note to those renting vacation properties that they would not be penalized for any spill-related cancellations, but urged them not to jump the gun.

"There are many questions and many `what ifs' regarding this event," the message read. "Because changes come about hourly and 30 days is a long way away, we are asking you to wait before canceling your vacation, especially those of you who are scheduled to arrive more than 30 days from today."

There are legitimate concerns, experts say. A second bird found in the slick, a brown pelican, is recovering at a bird rescue center in Louisiana. National Wildlife Federation president and CEO Larry Schweiger says there's no way to know how many birds have been oiled because the slick is so big and so far offshore.

Perdido Key, a barrier island between Pensacola and the Alabama state line with sugar-white sand studded with condominiums, likely would be the first place in Florida affect by the oil spill. Perdido — Spanish for "Lost" — got a sniff Tuesday morning of what may be in store.

"You could smell the smell of it, real heavy petroleum base," said Steve Ownesby, 54, a maintenance man at the Flora-Bama Lounge abutting the state line on the Florida side.

The air cleared later, but Owensby's 28-year-old daughter, Stephanie, who tends bar at the lounge, said some visitors have complained of feeling ill from the fumes.

"It's very sad because I grew up out here," she said. "I remember growing up seeing the white beaches my whole life. Every day I've been going to the beach ... a lot of people are out watching and crying."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil's hidden costs visible, but will it matter?
By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Wed May 5, 8:41 am ET

HOUSTON – America is seeing the usually hidden costs of fossil fuels — an oil spill's potential for huge environmental and economic damage, and deaths in coal and oil industry accidents.

But don't expect much to change. America and the world crave more oil and coal, no matter the all-too-risky ways needed to extract those fuels.

"We are absolutely addicted and we have no methadone. All we have is the hard stuff," said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. "The reality is we're on it, this incident has happened and what we have to do is figure out how we can move forward."

The United States is increasing its dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. And more domestic oil has to come from offshore because the land is producing less. The alternatives of renewable energy aren't cheap and aren't progressing quickly despite three decades of energy crises and legislation.

Oil industry officials, such as former Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister, see the well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. A Democratic president had just opened up to drilling areas of U.S. coastline that once seemed untouchable. "Drill baby drill" has been replaced with the phrase, "Whoa, there."

Myron Ebell of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which usually rails against too much government intervention into business, spoke Tuesday of the need for "more scrutiny of the industry" and regulations. That way drilling can continue.

BP's leaking well off the coast of Louisiana is that much of a game changer — at least in the way people talk.

Environmental activists see this as a moment when the public pushes aside an industry — like the Three Mile Island nuclear plant's partial meltdown did to nuclear energy.

"The thing that we had hoped would never happen has just happened," said Anna Aurilio, Washington office director for Environment America. "I think this has potential to really reset the conversation of climate and energy."

Likewise President Barack Obama's White House sees this as coinciding with the $80 billion in stimulus money already spent and going partly toward moving America's effort away from fossil fuels to a greener energy economy.

"We need a new energy plan for this country ... that begins a transition to renewable and battery technology," White House energy and climate change senior adviser Carol Browner told The Associated Press Tuesday. "We can push and have been pushing for legislation that will begin the change."

An odd but understandably muted tone has been adopted by both oil interests and many environmentalists. Aurilio had a hitch in her voice as she said: "Quite frankly, we're heartbroken. This disaster is touching us personally. This is something to pray that will never happen again."

Here in Houston, capital of the American oil industry, those at an offshore drilling technology conference don't like to say it too much or publicly — but no one is too worried about a public turning its back on oil and coal.

Why? They know there is not much of an alternative.

"There will be a temptation in that direction. When you see the risks of hydrocarbons you have to ask yourself, is this as good as it gets?" former Shell president Hofmeister told The Associated Press. "The good news is that hydrocarbon for all of its risks — meaning coal, gas and oil — is much less risky today than it was earlier in the industry's history."

Hofmeister, author of the new book "Why We Hate the Oil Companies," said that America not only has to keep drilling for more oil in places like the Gulf of Mexico, but increase its drilling.

By 2020 if drilling is limited, he said: "We will be in a new age in this country. It will be called the age of the energy abyss."

Hofmeister said no industry is hated more than the oil industry — it polls even lower than the federal government — but until the internal combustion engine is replaced, people will demand more oil. Especially when gas prices hit $4 a gallon — something Browner said can't be blamed on the oil spill since the well was an exploratory one, not one already supplying fuel.

"More and more of our oil and gas has to come from offshore. All you have to do is look at the historical trend," said Tyler Priest, an oil historian at the University of Houston.

Since 1991, oil production on U.S. land and in Alaska has dropped 40 percent, but it has nearly doubled in the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal statistics.

A 2008 International Energy Agency report estimates that reachable conventional oil located in water more than a quarter-mile deep is between 160 and 300 billion barrels, with more than two-thirds of that in Brazil, Angola, Nigeria and the United States.

"Our energy security is going to hang on whether we can drill offshore," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy studies fellow at Rice University's public policy institute.

So what are the costs?

It starts with the possibly devastating oil spill unfolding right now off the coast of Louisiana.

McKinney's research institute in Corpus Christi estimated a worst-case scenario cost of the spill to the Gulf of Mexico: $1.6 billion.

About one-quarter of that is due to lost fishing and tourism. But the bulk of the cost is in the stuff that's less easy to quantify: the general wetlands ecology. If half a million acres of wetlands are severely damaged, that drastically affects a fragile area that acts as a wastewater treatment plant for water flowing out of the Mississippi River — where 40 percent of America's water flows into. And every acre of wetland means one less foot of storm surge from a hurricane, he said.

McKinney worries that this is "strike three" for the Gulf's wetlands. First, they've been shrinking because of development and engineering changes to natural drainage in Louisiana. Then Hurricane Katrina damaged them. And now this.

"This one is getting all of us worried," McKinney said.

But that's not all, environmentalists point out. There are lives lost in getting oil and coal.

Another coal miner died in an accident Tuesday in West Virginia, that's in addition to the 29 who died in a massive explosion April 5 in that state and an accident last week that killed two in Kentucky. Besides the accidents, more than 29,000 workers have died of coal mining-related lung diseases since 1968, according to the federal government.

The BP PLC oil rig explosion April 20 that caused the spill also claimed 11 lives. That came only weeks after an April 2 refinery fire in Washington state that killed seven workers. In 2008, work accidents killed 120 people in the oil and gas extraction industry, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Add to that global warming. Burning oil and coal produces carbon dioxide, which scientists say is changing the Earth's climate and will eventually change the life of nearly everyone on the planet.

This year, after what seemed like a cool winter in some spots, the heat is back on. Already it's shaping up to be one of the warmest on record, with a record-setting March, according to both government weather statistics and those kept by global warming skeptics at the University of Alabama Huntsville.

"What we're seeing is proof positive of our dependence of oil and gas and we've ignored that in the past," McKinney said. "Unfortunately it's being rubbed in our face right now."


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First, they've been shrinking because of development and engineering changes to natural drainage in Louisiana. Then Hurricane Katrina damaged them

Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Deep beneath the Gulf, oil may be wreaking havoc
By Cain Burdeau And Harry R. Weber, AP Writers Wed May 5, 8:43 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – The oil you can't see could be as bad as the oil you can.

While people anxiously wait for the slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, where they threaten virtually every link in the ocean food chain, from plankton to fish that are on dinner tables everywhere.

"The threat to the deep-sea habitat is already a done deal — it is happening now," said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Hail-size gobs of oil the consistency of tar or asphalt will roll around the bottom, while other bits will get trapped hundreds of feet below the surface and move with the current, said Robert S. Carney, a Louisiana State University oceanographer.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded last month and killed 11 people. On Wednesday, workers loaded a 100-ton, concrete-and-steel box the size of a four-story building onto a boat and hope to lower it to the bottom of the sea by week's end to capture some of the oil. Crews also set fires at the worst spots on the surface Wednesday to burn off oil.

Scientists say bacteria, plankton and other tiny, bottom-feeding creatures will consume oil, and will then be eaten by small fish, crabs and shrimp. They, in turn, will be eaten by bigger fish, such as red snapper, and marine mammals like dolphins.

The petroleum substances that concentrate in the sea creatures could kill them or render them unsafe for eating, scientists say. "If the oil settles on the bottom, it will kill the smaller organisms like the copepods and small worms," Montagna said. "When we lose the forage, then you have an impact on the larger fish."

Making matters worse for the deep sea is the leaking well's location: It is near the continental shelf of the Gulf where a string of coral reefs flourishes. Coral is a living creature that excretes a hard calcium carbonate exoskeleton, and oil globs can kill it.

The reefs are colorful underwater metropolises of biodiversity, attracting sea sponges, crabs, fish, algae and octopus. "In my mind, they are at least as sensitive to contamination to oil as coastal habitat," said James Cowan, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University. "They are in deeper water, so they are kind of out of sight, out of mind."

There are other important habitats in shallower waters, such as an ancient oyster shell reef off the Mississippi and Alabama coasts. It is a vital nursery ground for red snapper and habitat for sponges, soft corals and starfish.

Scientists are watching carefully to see whether the slick will hitch a ride to the East Coast by way of a powerful eddy known as the "loop current," which could send the spill around Florida and into the Atlantic Ocean. If that happens, the oil could foul beaches and kill marine life on the East Coast. "Once it's in the loop current, that's the worst case," said Steve DiMarco, an oceanographer with Texas A&M University-College Station. "Then that oil could wind up along the Keys and transported out to the Atlantic."

Engineers are racing to stem the flow of oil before the disaster escalates, mainly by getting ready to place a giant structure on top of the spill to funnel the crude into a tanker. The boat carrying the contraption set sail late Wednesday. "We're a little anxious," boat captain Demi Shaffer told The Associated Press aboard the vessel just after it set off. "They're gonna try everything they can. If it don't work, they'll try something else." The Associated Press is the only news organization with access to the containment effort in the Gulf.

BP is also exploring a technique in which crews would reconfigure the well that would allow them to plug the leak, but that effort is a couple weeks off.

The cause of the rig explosion is still not known, but investigators from multiple federal agencies are looking into the matter. The rig owner, Transocean, said in a filing with regulators Wednesday that it has received a request from the Justice Department to preserve information about the blast.

The Gulf ecosystem is already stressed by fertilizer and other farm runoff from the Mississippi River and the loss of wetlands to erosion and development. About 2,100 square miles of wetlands have disappeared since the 1930s in the southern Louisiana.

Every summer, algae caused by fertilizer runoff sucks up the oxygen in a large patch of the Gulf, creating a "dead zone" from which all sorts of sea creatures must escape. This year, they will be swimming into waters fouled by the oil spill. "We're always wondering when we may reach the point where straw breaks the camel's back," Montagna said. "At some point you have to wonder if we will see catastrophic losses."

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Why is it that no one has a grip on this crap??... I've worked on oil rigs, drilling and maitaining wells on water and soil... when you have a spill or leak on dry land you block it to provent it from spreading and take up the land,,,, usually a small amount,,, and clean it. by treating it with known methods. There has never been a successfull way to contain and "fix oil on water" If you don't like whats going on,,, stop driving your car and stop using anything else that depends on oil,,, otherwise shut the f up and demand opening up the Alaskan oil fields unless you think the Alaskan elk is worth more than the earths garden..... plankton......Alaska would be a lot safer,,, until we develope beter alternatives, or you're ready to stop driving and having electrictity, oil is the answer...

My question is ,,, Why isn't the media trashing Obamma for ""NO ACTION""... they went non stop on Bush for slow action with the Katrina disaster??? Sea life don"t have a choice or chance. ,,As sad as it is,,, those people in Louisanna had an out. I've lived in FL for 30 years,,,and worked in LA for 3 prior... the warning is there and unless you choose to stay,,, there is help if you want to leave..... In the end,, unless you are ready to park your car.... shut the f up or donate to the efforts to clean up.!!

[Jolie Rouge]

Corks, pillows suggested as remedies for oil spill
By Jay Reeves, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 26 mins ago

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. – Here's an idea for stopping all that oil from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico: Put a cork in the blown-out well. If that doesn't work, how about freezing the petroleum to create black oilsicles that can be picked up, refined and sold?

Government officials are being inundated with homespun remedies as they try to prevent the nightmare scenario of oil washing up all over the Gulf Coast, blackening a region known for its abundant wildlife and white beaches.

Some proposals are realistic, others seem far-fetched. Some are just goofy.

Someone who called a telephone line that was accepting public suggestions mentioned stopping the flow by capping the damaged well with a cork, said Lt. James McKnight, a spokesman with the Coast Guard in Mobile. It would have to be a really big cork, presumably.

One caller suggested sewing pillows together to line beaches and soak up the oil as it comes ashore. Along the same line, dozens of salons in Alabama and Florida are collecting hair trimmings with plans to stuff shorn locks into old stockings and create makeshift oil-absorbers called booms.

On Facebook, a group dedicated to the oil spill includes suggestions like using explosives to stop the gusher, which is about 5,000 feet underwater.

And some suggest the real solution is an old standby — prayer.

A group of business people with a product called Clean Kool have suggested using a carbon dioxide solution shot from guns to freeze parts of the slick, which could then be scooped up and refined. Supporters of the idea include consultant Lee Helms, a former director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency who now is in private business. "We're fixing to do a demonstration of our product for a couple of mayors down at the beach. The state is going to look at our product, too," said Terry Hester, a representative of Clean Kool. "We've got a product we know will work."

Members of the Clean Kool team, like other business representatives, have gone to a command center set up by BP PLC, which is responsible for the cleanup, and the Coast Guard in Mobile to pitch their products.

Hester and his associates waited more than five hours in the lobby before guards ushered them into the nerve center of the operation, where more than 400 government and industry scientists, members of the military and others are trying to figure out how to best protect the coast.

Ken Davis of Pensacola, Fla., previously has contracted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to clean up environmental messes by using peat moss to soak up oil on land and inland waters, but he can't get through to the federal government or companies working on the oil spill. Phone lines are busy; calls aren't returned.

Even a USDA official in Washington has tried to help him cut the red tape without luck. "The results of this stuff are unbelievable. I can get 390,000 pounds of peat moss in 30 hours. It's an endless supply," Davis said Wednesday. "It's not an end to the problem. It just makes the cleanup a hell of a lot better."

Some innovative ideas already are in place.

In the Florida Panhandle, Walton County is placing hay bales along its 26-mile shoreline and plans to spray hay into the water once the oil arrives. The oil will adhere to the strands, making it easier to remove, or so the thinking goes. The county also is setting up retention fences to capture oil in case the hay doesn't work.

A Louisiana company, HESCO Bastion USA Inc., constructs 15-foot-long wire frames that are fitted with liners. All over Iraq and Afghanistan, the devices have been unfolded, formed into walls and filled with sand to create barriers around U.S. military bases. They've been used in similar fashion to fortify flood walls in places including New Orleans.

On the coast, rigs that troops call "HESCO barriers" now stand in shallow water off Dauphin Island in a 3-mile-long wall meant to stop oil from fouling delicate grasses and bird habitat. They are filled with sand to help catch the oil and hold the rigs in place, and plans call for adding an absorbent agent to solidify the petroleum once it's captured. "We never really thought about them being used this way, but hopefully it will help," said Dennis Barkemeyer, a technical representative from HESCO Bastion.

Alabama National Guard troops who built the wall don't know whether the contraptions will work. "There's people getting paid a lot more money than me to think up and dream up these things. We're just here executing the mission," said Sgt. Maj. William Jones.

Another old idea is being used in a new way on the island, a narrow coastal barrier between the Gulf and Mississippi Sound.

Bulldozers and bucket-loaders have pushed sand into a long ridge along the main road in an attempt to prevent oil from flowing across streets and into sewers should the slick hit Dauphin Island. In the past, such berms were constructed to guard against hurricanes.

BP's leading solution for stopping the underwater oil geyser has an otherworldly quality itself: Crews built a 100-ton concrete-and-metal box that's supposed to be placed over one of the leaks to capture oil that's now flowing into the Gulf. BP says the contraption will be on the seabed by Thursday.

Homespun remedies have been proposed and used in past oil spills with mixed results.

In 2006, when oil gushing from a sunken tanker threatened beaches, coral reefs and swamps in the Philippines, the government initially bought into the idea of using human hair clippings to mop up oil. Hair and feathers were gathered at collection centers, but officials decided against distributing them to coastal villages for fear of causing more pollution.

Instead, rice stalks were attached to bamboo poles and used as makeshift brooms that successfully sopped up oil from the water near the coast, said Teresita Siazon, the coordinator of the civil defense council in the Guimaras province.

Rice brooms might make it to the Gulf of Mexico before anyone tries to cap the well with a huge wine stopper. "I'm not aware that a cork has been tried," said Lt. Collin Bronson, a Coast Guard spokesman.

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[Jolie Rouge]

More of Gulf closed to fishing because of spill
29 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Federal officials have expanded an area that is off-limits to fishing because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday an area from the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River to south of Pensacola, Fla., is now closed. NOAA spokeswoman Christine Patrick said the initial closure was 6,814 square miles and the new area is 10,807 square miles.

Late Thursday, Louisiana officials closed shrimping in state waters from South Pass of the Mississippi to the eastern shore of Four Bayous Pass just east of Grand Isle.

Earlier, state waters east of the Mississippi were closed to seafood harvesting.

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Gulf oil spill ruining vibe on `redneck Riviera'
Jay Reeves, Associated Press Writer – Fri May 7, 5:49 am ET

GULF SHORES, Ala. – An entire festival focused on a fish-tossing contest. Countless nights ended at bars on beaches of pure white sand, the strains of local boy Jimmy Buffett's odes to drinking and sailing mixing with the surf. It's easy to see why generations of Southerners have flocked to the stretch of northern Gulf Coast affectionately called the "redneck Riviera" — and why they're worried about whether a massive oil spill is about to ruin their down-home playground.

For more than two weeks, millions of gallons of crude have been spewing from the ocean floor south of Louisiana, ever since an oil rig explosion there killed 11. Oil reached more of that state's shoreline this week, and furthering fears that it's only a matter of time before it arrives at points east.

Matt Dagen can't help but look at the emerald green waters and spotless Alabama beach and worry that a lifestyle, not just wildlife and dollars, is in peril. "I remember the Exxon Valdez," said Dagen, standing on the porch of The Hangout, a beach restaurant and entertainment complex he helps manage. "I just walked out here a few minutes ago and saw the gulls and tried to imagine what all this would be like with oil all over it."

The stretch of sugar-white beaches from Gulf Shores to Panama City, Fla., once was a laid-back regional draw, with families from Atlanta and Birmingham vacationing in beachfront homes on stilts with screened porches near pines and scrub brush. The rest of the world discovered the area in recent decades, and one-time fishing villages like Destin, Fla., now feature upscale condominium towers and designer shops that draw tourists from all points.

In Alabama's Baldwin County, home to the state's prime beach resorts, more than 4.5 million people visited the coast last year, according to the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, spending some $2.3 billion on everything from hotel rooms to Budweiser to seafood platters and temporary tattoos. In the Florida Panhandle, a new airport at Panama City with a 10,000-foot runway is expected to bring in even more tourists.

Even with jets and pastel high-rises and communities of sprawling second homes, much of the old character remains on the "redneck Riviera," a lighthearted tag that many locals revere even if tourism promoters cringe when they hear it.

Visitors can still get a room in a nice beachfront hotel for $90 this time of year. The Flora-Bama Lounge on the state line drew thousands on the last weekend in April with its 26th Interstate Mullet Toss at Perdido Key, Fla., which is exactly what it sounds like: a competition, complete with age and gender brackets, to sling dead fish through the air, discus-style.

Late at night, and sometimes earlier in the day, women take off their bras and toss them into the bar's rafters, where hundreds hang on clotheslines. To the east in Panama City, kids love getting on small cruise boats to watch dolphins swim alongside looking for handouts, an old attraction that ticks off biologists and environmentalists. Teenagers still cruise the main beach road hooting and hollering and dodging the cops, just like their parents used to do.

But out on the water, orange and yellow booms bob up and down. They're a mild comfort in that they're meant to block any oil from reaching the beaches, bays and marshes. They're a cause for concern for the very same reason.

Dominic Specchio has what many consider the dream life in these parts — he runs a company that rents pontoon boats, kayaks and WaveRunners to tourists. He wonders what that life will be like later this summer and beyond.

Business is slow right now ahead of the summer tourist seasons, so the spill hasn't had a big effect on the bottom line. "If this doesn't get corrected by Memorial Day we'll be hurting," he said.

The booms will be gone some day, and the state already is planning to lure visitors back with a TV commercial that at least tacitly acknowledges the region's, uh, flavor. "I won't say it's going to involve drinking beer, but it shows buddies having fun and pulling monster fish into the boat," said Lee Sentell, director of the state's tourism agency.

Matt Siniard is worried about losing his favorite beach to oil, but he wasn't letting it ruin his sunny day at the public beach in Gulf Shores with friends. Rebel flag in hand, he proudly said they all call him — what else — Redneck. "We party at this beach all the time," he said. "Sure would hate to see a bunch of nasty black oil ooze all over the beach."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Bubble of methane triggered rig blast
By Noaki Schwartz And Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writers 13 mins ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation.

While the cause of the explosion is still under investigation, the sequence of events described in the interviews provides the most detailed account of the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers and touched off the underwater gusher that has poured more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

Portions of the interviews, two written and one taped, were described in detail to an Associated Press reporter by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He received them from industry friends seeking his expert opinion.

A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record, according to the transcripts. Meanwhile, far below, the rig was being converted from an exploration well to a production well.

Based on the interviews, Bea believes that the workers set and then tested a cement seal at the bottom of the well. Then they reduced the pressure in the drill column and attempted to set a second seal below the sea floor. A chemical reaction caused by the setting cement created heat and a gas bubble which destroyed the seal.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, Bea said.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the sea water in the drill column suddenly shooting back at them, rocketing 240 feet in the air, he said. Then, gas surfaced. Then oil.

"What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig laborer was swoosh, boom, run," Bea said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

"That's where the first explosion happened," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil in the 1960s during the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout. "The mud room was next to the quarters where the party was. Then there was a series of explosions that subsequently ignited the oil that was coming from below."

According to one interview transcript, a gas cloud covered the rig, causing giant engines on the drill floor to run too fast and explode. The engines blew off the rig and set "everything on fire," the account said. Another explosion below blew more equipment overboard.

BP spokesman John Curry would not comment Friday night on whether methane gas or the series of events described in the internal documents caused the accident.

"Clearly, what happened on the Deepwater Horizon was a tragic accident," said Curry, who is based at an oil spill command center in Robert, La. "We anticipate all the facts will come out in a full investigation."

The BP executives were injured but survived, according to one account. Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died.

"The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they managed to get in the life boats with assistance from others," said the transcript.

The reports made Bea, the 73-year-old industry veteran, cry.

"It sure as hell is painful," he said. "Tears of frustration and anger."

On Friday, a BP-chartered vessel lowered a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto the ruptured well, an important step in a delicate and unprecedented attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

"We are essentially taking a four-story building and lowering it 5,000 feet and setting it on the head of a pin," BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press.

Underwater robots guided the 40-foot-tall box into place in a slow-moving drama. Now that the contraption is on the seafloor, workers will need at least 12 hours to let it settle and make sure it's stable before the robots can hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

"It appears to be going exactly as we hoped," Salvin said on Friday afternoon, shortly after the four-story device hit the seafloor. "Still lots of challenges ahead, but this is very good progress."

By Sunday, the box the size of a house could be capturing up to 85 percent of the oil.

The task became increasingly urgent as toxic oil crept deeper into the bays and marshes of the Mississippi Delta.

A sheen of oil began arriving on land last week, and crews have been laying booms, spraying chemical dispersants and setting fire to the slick to try to keep it from coming ashore. But now the thicker, stickier goo — arrayed in vivid, brick-colored ribbons — is drawing ever closer to Louisiana's coastal communities.

There are still untold risks and unknowns with the containment box: The approach has never been tried at such depths, where the water pressure is enough to crush a submarine, and any wrong move could damage the leaking pipe and make the problem worse. The seafloor is pitch black and the water murky, though lights on the robots illuminate the area where they are working.

If the box works, another one will be dropped onto a second, smaller leak at the bottom of the Gulf.

At the same time, crews are drilling sideways into the well in hopes of plugging it up with mud and concrete, and they are working on other ways to cap it.

Investigators looking into the cause of the explosion have been focusing on the so-called blowout preventer. Federal regulators told The Associated Press Friday that they are going to examine whether these last-resort cutoff valves on offshore oil wells are reliable.

Blowouts are infrequent, because well holes are blocked by piping and pumped-in materials like synthetic mud, cement and even sea water. The pipes are plugged with cement, so fluid and gas can't typically push up inside the pipes.

Instead, a typical blowout surges up a channel around the piping. The narrow space between the well walls and the piping is usually filled with cement, so there is no pathway for a blowout. But if the cement or broken piping leaves enough space, a surge can rise to the surface.

There, at the wellhead of exploratory wells, sits the massive steel contraption known as a blowout preventer. It can snuff a blowout by squeezing rubber seals tightly around the pipes with up to 1 million pounds of force. If the seals fail, the blowout preventer deploys a last line of defense: a set of rams that can slice right through the pipes and cap the blowout.

Deepwater Horizon was also equipped with an automated backup system called a Deadman. It should have activated the blowout preventer even if workers could not.

Based on the interviews with rig workers, none of those safeguards worked.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Deep-sea ice crystals stymie Gulf oil leak fix
By Harry R. Weber And Sarah Larimer, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 9 mins ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A novel but risky attempt to use a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box to cover a deepwater oil well gushing toxic crude into the Gulf of Mexico was aborted Saturday after ice crystals encased it, an ominous development as thick blobs of tar began washing up on Alabama's white sand beaches.

The setback left the mission to cap the ruptured well in doubt. It had taken about two weeks to build the box and three days to cart it 50 miles out then slowly lower it to the well a mile below the surface, but the frozen depths were too much for it to handle.

Still, BP officials overseeing the cleanup efforts were not giving up just yet on hopes that a containment box — either the one brought there or a larger one being built — could cover the well and be used to capture the oil and funnel it to a tanker at the surface to be carted away. Officials said it would be at least Monday before a decision was made on what next step to take. "I wouldn't say it's failed yet," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said. "What I would say is what we attempted to do ... didn't work."

There was a renewed sense of urgency as dime- to golfball-sized balls of tar began washing up on Dauphin Island, three miles off the Alabama mainland at the mouth of Mobile Bay and much farther east than the thin, rainbow sheens that had so far arrived sporadically in the Louisiana marshes. "It almost looks like bark, but when you pick it up it definitely has a liquid consistency and it's definitely oil," said Kimberly Creel, 41, who was hanging out and swimming with hundreds of other beachgoers. "... I can only imagine what might be coming this way that might be larger."

About a half dozen tar balls had been collected by Saturday afternoon at Dauphin Island, Coast Guard chief warrant officer Adam Wine said in Mobile. Authorities planned to test the substance but strongly suspected it came from the oil spill.

A long line of materials that resembled a string of pompoms were positioned on a stretch of the shore. Crews walked along the beach in rubber boots, carrying trash bags to clear debris from the sand.

Brenda Prosser, of Mobile, said she wept when she saw the workers. "I just started crying. I couldn't quit crying. I'm shaking now," Prosser said. "To know that our beach may be black or brown, or that we can't get in the water, it's so sad."

Prosser, 46, said she was afraid to let her 9-year-old son, Grant, get in the water, and she worried that the spill would rob her of precious moments with her own child. "I've been coming here since I was my son's age, as far back as I can remember in my life," Prosser said.

In the three weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, about 210,000 gallons of crude a day has been flowing into the Gulf. Until Saturday none of the thick sludge — those iconic images of past spills — had reached Gulf shores.

It was a troubling turn of events, especially since the intrepid efforts to use the containment box had not yet succeeded. There has been a rabid fascination with the effort to use the peaked box the size of a four-story house to place over the ruptured well. It had taken more than 12 hours to slowly lower it to the seafloor, a task that required painstaking precision to accurately position it over the well or it could damage the leaking pipe and make the problem worse.

It was fraught with doubt and peril since nothing like it had been attempted at such depths with water pressure great enough to crush a submarine. It ended up encountering an icy crystals, familiar territory for deepwater drilling.

The icy buildup on the containment box made it too buoyant and clogged it up, BP's Suttles said. Workers who had carefully lowered the massive box over the leak nearly a mile below the surface had to lift it and move it some 600 feet to the side. If it had worked, authorities had said it would reduce the flow by about 85 percent, buying a bit more time as a three-month effort to drill a relief well goes on simultaneously.

Company and Coast Guard officials had cautioned that icelike hydrates, a slushy mixture of gas and water, would be one of the biggest challenges to the containment box plan, and their warnings proved accurate. The crystals clogged the opening in the top of the peaked box like sand in a funnel, only upside-down.

Options under consideration included raising the box high enough that warmer water would prevent the slush from forming, or using heated water or methanol to prevent the crystals from forming.

Steve Rinehart, a BP spokesman in Mobile, Ala., said late Saturday a second containment device was under construction by Wild Well Control, Inc., in Port Fourchon, La., the company that built the first one. "It's the same general idea and approach. It may be a slightly different size and shape," he said.

Even as officials pondered their next move, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said she must continue to manage expectations of what the containment box can do. "This dome is no silver bullet to stop the leak," she said.

The captain of the supply boat that carried the precious cargo for 11 hours from the Louisiana coast earlier last week wasn't giving up hope. "Everybody knew this was a possibility well before we brought the dome out," Capt. Demi Shaffer, of Seward, Alaska, told an Associated Press reporter stationed in the Gulf in the heart of the containment zone with the 12-man crew of the Joe Griffin. "It's an everyday occurrence when you're drilling, with the pipeline trying to freeze up."

The spot where Deepwater Horizon rig once was positioned is now teeming with vessels working on containing the well. There are 15 boats and large ships at or near the site — some being used in an ongoing effort to drill a relief well, another with the crane that lowered the containment device to the seafloor.

There is even a vessel at the site called the Seacor Lee that is sending a live video feed from the undersea robots back to BP's operations center in Houston. "Everyone was hoping that that would slow it down a bit if not stop it," said Shane Robichaux, of Chauvin, a 39-year-old registered nurse relaxing at his vacation camp in Cocodrie, La. "I'm sure they'll keep working on it `til it gets fixed, one way or another. But we were hopeful that would shut it down."

The original blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP PLC's internal investigation.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, said Robert Bea, a University of California Berkley engineering professor and oil pipeline expert who detailed the interviews to an Associated Press reporter. "A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil spill may endanger human health, officials say
By John Flesher, Ap Environmental Writer Fri May 7, 12:57 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – With a huge and unpredictable oil slick drifting in the Gulf of Mexico, state and federal authorities are preparing to deal with a variety of hazards to human health if and when the full brunt of the toxic mess washes ashore.

The list of potential threats runs from minor nuisances such as runny noses and headaches to nausea. While waiting to see how bad things will get, public health agencies are monitoring air quality, drinking water supplies and seafood processing plants and advising people to take precautions. "We don't know how long this spill will last or how much oil we'll be dealing with, so there's a lot of unknowns," said Dr. Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana's state health director. "But we're going to make things as safe as humanly possible."

Oil has been spewing into the Gulf at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 people. Little if any has reached land thus far, but shifts in wind speed and direction could propel the slick toward populated areas.

In a possible hint of things to come, a foul stench drifted over parts of southwestern Louisiana last week. The oil probably was the culprit, said Alan Levine, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, whose office heard about dozens of complaints — even from state legislators in New Orleans, some 130 miles from the leaky undersea well. "Their eyes were burning, they felt nauseated, they were smelling it," Levine said.

Farther up the coast at Shell Beach, marina operator and commercial fisherman Robert Campo said the smell gave him a headache as he collected oysters 20 miles offshore. "It was rotten," he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has began round-the-clock air monitoring in Gulf coastal areas and posting online hourly readings for ozone and tiny particles such as soot. Both can cause respiratory problems and are particuarly aggravating for people with chronic conditions such as asthma.

Crude oil emits volatile organic compounds that react with nitrogen oxides to produce ozone. Fires being set by the Coast Guard to burn off oil on the water's surface would produce sooty, acrid smoke. "We don't know what the impacts are going to be yet," said Dave Bary, an EPA spokesman in Dallas. "We don't know in what direction this oil will go."

The potential for unhealthy air quality depends on a variety of factors, particularly the speed and direction of winds that could disperse fumes and determine where they go, said Jonathan Ward, an environmental toxicology professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

With the leaky Gulf well some 50 miles offshore, Ward said much of the oil vapor likely wouldn't reach land, although the potential for air pollution from the slick will remain as long as the leak continues.

Public health agencies in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi advised people near the coast who experience nausea, headaches or other smell-related ailments to stay inside, turn on air conditioners and avoid exerting themselves outdoors.

In addition to air pollution, officials also were guarding against health problems from tainted drinking water and seafood.

Some communities, including New Orleans, get their supplies from the Mississippi River. Its southerly currents will prevent oil from drifting upstream to city intake pipes, and the Coast Guard is making sure that any ships with oil-coated hulls are scrubbed down before proceeding up the river, Guidry said.

Even so, the state health department has ordered testing of municipal water systems near the Gulf for signs of oil. "It's next to impossible that a high amount would get in," Guidry said. "Even if some got through, more than likely the treatment system would eliminate it."

The department this week began taking samples at seafood processing plants. Officials have ordered a temporary moratorium on fishing in federal waters from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle, but sampling will provide benchmarks enabling scientists to track any increases in contaminant levels once fishing is allowed to resume.

Louisiana health officials said they believe fish, shrimp and other Gulf delicacies already on the market are safe. "If we see increases in hydrocarbons or other contaminants, we'd stop the flow of seafood," Levine said.

Oil has compounds that have been linked to cancer. But they break down in the body and are excreted, so there's little chance of getting cancer from tainted seafood even if people ate it for many years, said LuAnn White, director of Tulane Universisty's Center for Applied Environmental Public Health.

The telltale smell likely would deter consumers from eating oily seafood, White said, but if people did eat it, they might get gastrointestinal sickness.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with epidemiologists in the Gulf states to develop studies of health repercussions from the oil spill, Guidry said.

Yet another hazard is direct contact with oil-saturated water — particularly for cleanup crews and volunteers involved in animal rescue operations.

When the container ship Cosco Busan hit a bridge and released 53,000 gallons of highly toxic bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay in November 2007, officials managing the cleanup ordered volunteers to wear protective suits, gloves and masks that later were discarded at a hazardous waste dump. Some oil fouled beaches, which were closed to prevent danger to the public.

People working around the Gulf spill should be equipped with respirator devices and wear heavy-duty gloves and protective clothing to guard against painful skin rashes, said Gina Solomon, an associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco medical school and a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has treated patients exposed to oil fumes. "The workers absolutely need to be protected," Solomon said.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Senate hearings prompting spill blame game
By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Writer 17 mins ago

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WASHINGTON – The chairman of a key Senate committee says failures that led to the massive Gulf oil spill need to be closely examined so new safety measures can be imposed.

New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman opened the first congressional hearings Tuesday into the accident. Scheduled to testify are executives of companies involved, including BP, which operated the drilling rig.

Bingaman said it's not enough "to label this catastrophic failure an unpredictable and unforeseeable occurrence."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the panel's ranking Republican, said it is essential to determine if the rig operators followed regulations and the law. But she said the accident should not interfere in continued offshore oil development.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The blame game is in full throttle as Congress begins hearings on the massive oil spill threatening sensitive marshes and marine life along the Gulf Coast.

Executives of the three companies involved in the drilling activities that unleashed the environmental crisis are trying to shift responsibility to each other in testimony to be given at separate hearings Tuesday before two Senate committees, even as the cause of the rig explosion and spill has yet to be determined.

Lawmakers are expected to ask oil industry giant BP, which operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, why its drilling plans discounted the risk that such a catastrophic pipeline rupture would ever happen, and why it assumed that if a leak did occur, the oil would not pose a major threat.

The morning hearing by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the afternoon session before the Environmental and Public Health Committee give lawmakers their first chance to question the executives publicly about the April 20 rig fire, attempts to stop the flow of oil and efforts to reduce the damage.

Copies of planned testimony, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, brought into the open fissures among the companies caught up in the accident and its legal and economic fallout.

A top executive of BP PLC, which leased the rig for exploratory drilling, focuses on a critical safety device that was supposed to shut off oil flow on the ocean floor in the event of a well blowout but "failed to operate."

"That was to be the fail-safe in case of an accident," Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America, says, pointedly noting that the 450-ton blowout protector — as well as the rig itself — was owned by Transocean Ltd.

Of the 126 people on the Deepwater Horizon rig when it was engulfed in flames, only seven were BP employees, said McKay.

But Transocean CEO Steven Newman was seeking to put responsibility on BP.

"Offshore oil and gas production projects begin and end with the operator, in this case BP," said Newman, according to the prepared remarks. His testimony says it was BP that prepared the drilling plan and was in charge when the drilling concluded and the crew was preparing to cap the well 5,000 feet beneath the sea.

To blame the blowout protecters "simply makes no sense" because there is "no reason to believe" that the equipment was not operational, Newman argues.

Newman also cites a third company, Halliburton Inc., which as a subcontractor was encasing the well pipe in cement before plugging it — a process dictated by BP's drilling plan.

A Halliburton executive, Tim Probert, planned to assert that the company's work was finished "in accordance with the requirements" set out by BP and with accepted industry practices. He says pressure tests were conducted after the cementing work was finished to demonstrate well integrity.

BP and Transocean are conducting separate investigations into what went wrong.

In Louisiana, the Coast Guard and the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service were beginning two days of hearings on the cause of the explosion. The list of witnesses scheduled to testify includes a Coast Guard search and rescue specialist, crew members from a cargo vessel that was tethered to the Deepwater Horizon rig and two Interior inspectors.

In other developments:

• Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will propose splitting up the Minerals Management Service, an administration official, who asked not to be identified because the plan is not yet public, told The Associated Press. One agency would be charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, while the other would oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties.

• Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley will tour the Mobile Incident Command Center in Mobile, Ala., on Tuesday.

• The Environmental Protection Agency gave the go-ahead Monday to use oil dispersing chemicals near the sea bottom where the oil is leaking, although the agency acknowledged ecological effects of the chemical are not yet fully known. Two tests have shown the procedure helps break up the oil before it reaches the surface.

• BP said it has spent $350 million so far on spill response activities.

• President Barack Obama, after being briefed on the latest developments Monday, directed that more independent scientists get involved in seeking a solution to the spill. Energy Secretary Steven Chu will take a team of scientists to BP in Houston.

• BP said it has received 4,700 claims for damages related to the spill and so far has paid out $3.5 million on 295 of the claims.

[Jolie Rouge]

Troops, inmates try to protect coast as executives face Congress
By Steve Gorman And Timothy Gardner 1 hr 43 mins ago

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Oil is seen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in an aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the coast of Mobile, Alabama


PORT FOURCHON, La./WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Troops using helicopters and bulldozers, helped by prison inmates, rushed to shore up Louisiana's coast against a huge oil slick on Tuesday as oil company executives traded blame in Washington over what could be the worst spill in U.S. history.

While the executives pointed fingers during a congressional hearing over who was responsible for the April 20 offshore drilling rig explosion that ruptured an oil well still spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico, military and civil authorities focused on trying to limit environmental damage on the coast.

Top executives from the companies drilling the ruptured well testified before U.S. lawmakers as protesters called for boycotts and senators said the explosion and oil spill were due to a cascade of errors. The executives blamed one another for the explosion and failure to control the spill.

At least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) of crude per day are gushing out of the well owned by BP. The economic and ecological impact could be massive as the spill threatens to devastate wildlife, fisheries, shipping and tourism in four states along the Gulf Coast.

BP's stock recovered after dropping through most of the day, down 0.67 percent in London trading. Company shares have fallen more 15 percent since the rig blast, wiping about $30 billion from its market value.

In Port Fourchon, fatigue-clad Army National Guard troops from the 769th Engineer Battalion of Louisiana sweated alongside prisoners in scarlet red pants and white T-shirts with "Inmate Labor" on the back as they filled giant 1,000-pound (450 kg) sandbags.

The bulging bags were then ferried and dropped by Black Hawk helicopters to plug gaps in outlying barrier island beaches through which the oil could wash into inland marshes and wetlands teeming with wildlife and seafood fisheries.

Authorities are hoping that by bolstering the barrier islands they can keep the oil from the marshlands, where it would be much more difficult to clean off. Bulldozers also worked to build up the beach line in areas they could reach.

"We started filling a few bags Sunday evening but the big push came yesterday," said Sergeant Wesley Melton, 38.

"Just about everybody out here has been deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq, some numerous times. Their mission was clearing routes of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), and mines," he added. "You won't find anyone out here that will complain about helping."

BLAME GAME

In the first of two days of congressional hearings, Lamar McKay, president of BP America Inc, Steven Newman, president of Transocean Ltd, and Tim Probert, a senior executive at Halliburton Co, sat through accusations of blame by senators, then made a few of their own.

Republican Senator John Barrasso told them, "I hear one message and the message is: 'don't blame me.' Well shifting this blame does not get us very far."

The three companies involved in the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico face intense political pressure in the aftermath of the explosion that sank Transocean's Deepwater Horizon rig as it was finishing a well for BP.

Halliburton joins BP and Transocean because it provided a variety of services on the rig and was involved in cementing the well to stabilize its walls and plug it.

Transocean's testimony pinned the explosion on the failure of the cementing to plug the underwater well.

BP directed blame for the blowout at Transocean, the rig's owner and overseer of the operation of the blowout preventer, a stack of pipes and valves designed to close off the flow of oil in case of a sudden pressure change.

"BP continues to make statements that make you believe that it has an arm's-length relationship to the architecture of the well, which is complete nonsense," said Bill Herbert, analyst at Houston-based research firm Simmons & Co International. "Its drilling engineers, we would imagine, were critically involved in all the key steps in drilling this well."

BP, which failed in its first effort to stem the flow of oil, was preparing another fix -- this time with a far smaller funnel than it tried previously.

BRACING FOR IMPACT

U.S. government officials said the impact of the oil spill could be immense. "Until we stop the release of oil from the sea bed, it has the potential to be worse than anything that we've seen," U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson told CNN.

In response to the BP spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is due to announce a division of the oversight body that ensures the safety of offshore drilling.

Regardless of who is responsible for the accident, officials agree that delays in containing the leaking well increase the chances it could become the worst U.S. oil spill ever, surpassing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska.

"We're in this subsea environment ... really you're talking about robots for the most part that have to do the actual work," Jackson said. "There's a real frustration about wanting to try things and then realizing that the environment that you're in causes problems."

The latest forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate that southeast winds will persist throughout the week and move the oil westward.

Along the Alabama coastline, residents were bracing for the impact on their shores, and on their livelihoods.

"It is going to touch everyone whose income relates to the water and recreation," said Andrew Saunders, owner of Saunders Yachtworks, a boat repair company in Dauphin Island. "Even if the oil doesn't hit, it will be like 9/11, when people sat on their hands for a couple of months to see what might happen."

Despite the spreading oil, port operators said shipping lanes and ports on the Gulf of Mexico were open on Tuesday.

The spill casts uncertainty on the fate of the Senate compromise climate bill set to be released this week. Some coastal state Democrats have threatened to oppose the bill, which is expected to include measures promoting offshore drilling in new areas.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist on Tuesday signed an executive order creating a Gulf Oil Spill Economic Recovery Task Force "to facilitate efforts by Florida businesses and industries in recovering from the loss of business and revenues due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."

Crist, running for the U.S. Senate, also said he will call lawmakers in for a special session to consider a constitutional ban on oil drilling in Florida's coastal waters.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Dead dolphins wash up on coast; oil's role unclear
By Janet Mcconnaughey And Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 26 mins ago
SHIP ISLAND, Miss. – Federal wildlife officials are treating the deaths of six dolphins on the Gulf Coast as oil-related even though other factors may be to blame.

Blair Mase (MACE') of the National Marine Fisheries Service said Tuesday that the carcasses have all been found in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama since May 2. Samples have been sent for testing to see whether a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico helped kill the dolphins.

Mase and animal rescue coordinator Michele Kelley in Louisiana said none of the carcasses has obvious signs of oil. Mase also said it's common for dead dolphins to wash up this time of year when they are in shallow waters to calve.

The Associated Press found dolphins swimming and playing in oily waters off Louisiana last week.


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[Jolie Rouge]

What went wrong at oil rig? A lot, probers find
By H. Josef Hebert And Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press Writers 27 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Bad wiring and a leak in what's supposed to be a "blowout preventer." Sealing problems that may have allowed a methane eruption. Even a dead battery, of all things.

New disclosures Wednesday revealed a complicated cascade of deep-sea equipment failures and procedural problems in the oil rig explosion and massive spill that is still fouling the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and threatening industries and wildlife near the coast and on shore.

The disclosures were described in internal corporate documents, marked confidential but provided to a House committee by BP PLC, the well's operator, and by the manufacturer of the safety device. Congressional investigators released them.

A senior BP executive, Lamar McKay, cautioned lawmakers, "It's inappropriate to draw any conclusions before all the facts are known." But the documents established the firmest evidence to date of the sequence of catastrophic events that led to the explosion and worsening spill, a series of failures more reminiscent of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger than the wreck of the Exxon Valdez.

Like the 1986 Challenger disaster, the investigation into the Gulf spill may well show that complex and seemingly failproof technical systems went wrong because of overlooked problems that interacted with each other in unexpected ways. In the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, a captain simply ran his ship onto a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling some 11 millions barrels of oil.

The April 20 BP rig explosion killed 11 people. Since then, nearly 4 million barrels of oil have spewed from the broken well pipe 5,000 feet under water 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, threatening sensitive ecological marshes and wetlands and the region's fishing industry.

Congressional investigators revealed Wednesday that a key safety system, known as the blowout preventer, used in BP's oil-drilling rig in the Gulf had a hydraulic leak and a failed battery that probably prevented it from working as designed.

They said that BP documents and others also indicated conflicting pipe pressure tests should have warned those on the rig that poor pipe integrity may have been allowing explosive methane gas to leak into the well.

"Significant pressure discrepancies were observed in at least two of these tests, which were conducted just hours before the explosion," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., at a House hearing on the rig fire and oil leak, citing documents his committee had received from BP.

Asked about the tests, Steven Newman, president of Transocean, which owned the drilling rig, and Lamar McKay, president of BP America told the committee the pressure readings were worrisome.

They indicated "that there was something happening in the well bore that shouldn't be happening," said Newman. McKay said the issue "is critical in the investigation" into the cause of the accident.

The well explosion unleashed a massive oil spill that after three weeks remains uncontained.

But Waxman said important elements of what went wrong were beginning to surface.

While "we have far more questions than answers," it appears clear that there were problems with the blowout preventers before the accident and confusion almost right up to the time of the explosion over the success of a process in which cement is injected into the well to temporarily close it in anticipation of future production.

In other developments Wednesday:

• The White House asked Congress to raise the limits on BP's liability to cover damage from the spill beyond the $75 million cap now in law. It also wants oil companies to pay more into a federal oil spill cleanup fund.

BP president Lamar McKay said the company will pay any legitimate claim of damages beyond cleanup costs despite the federal cap.

• On the Gulf Coast, a new containment box — a cylinder called a "top hat" — was placed on the sea floor near the well leak. Engineers hope to work out ways to avoid the problem that scuttled an earlier effort with a much bigger box before they move the cylinder over the end of the 5,000-foot-long pipe from the well.

• The Minerals Management Service told a government panel of investigators in Kenner, La., that inspections of deepwater drilling rigs has turned up only "a couple of minor issues."

The House hearing into the spill was the third this week at which executives of BP and two other companies were questioned by lawmakers.

The committee produced one document from BP that provided the most detailed information to date on what led up to and may have caused the explosion and spill at the Deepwater Horizon rig, floating in mile-deep waters 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and why equipment designed to stop a spill failed to do the job.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said there were at least "four significant problems with the blowout preventer" — or BOP — including evidence that it had a significant hydraulic leak and a dead battery that was supposed to activate a so-called "deadman" trigger.

A 2001 report by Transocean, which made the BOP equipment, indicated there can be as many as 260 failure possibilities in the equipment, which is supposed to be the final safeguard against a well blowout by clamping down and sealing a gushing oil well, said Stupak, chairman of the panel's investigation's subcommittee.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" asked Stupak.

Stupak said when an underwater remote vehicle tried to activate the blowout protector's devices designed to ram through the pipe and seal it, a loss of hydraulic pressure was discovered in the device's emergency power component.

When dye was injected "it showed a large leak coming from a loose fitting," said Stupak, citing BP documents. He said officials at Cameron, the company that made the preventer, had told the committee the leak was not believed to have been caused by the blowout because other fittings in the system were tight.

Stupak also questioned why the BOP had been modified.

Newman, the Transocean executive told the committee that, indeed, the BOP had been modified in 2005 at the request of BP and with approval of the Minerals Management Service.

Stupak said the committee had been told that one of the BOP's ram drivers had been changed so it could be used for routine testing and was no longer designed to activate in an emergency. He said after the spill BP "spent a day trying to use this ... useless test ram" which no longer was configured for emergency use.

Executives of the companies involved have sought to shift blame on one another at Senate and House hearings this week on the spill.

BP has cited the failure of the blowout preventer owned by Transocean, which in turn has raised questions about the cementing process conducted by Halliburton, a BP subcontractor.

At Senate hearings Tuesday and again before the House panel, Timothy Probert, an executive of Halliburton, said that its work had been completed except for the installation of a final cement cap and that it was done according to the BP drilling plan.

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[gmyers]

I wonder if they could set the oil on fire a=nd burn it off the water. Or would that cause hazards for people and sea life.

[Jolie Rouge]

The seas were too rough to carry thru that plan earlier ... now a lot of the oil has sunk just below the surface and mixed with the sea water may not burn cleanly or at all ..

[Jolie Rouge]

BP tries tube to siphon spewing Gulf oil to tanker
By Allen G. Breed And Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writers 41 mins ago

Undersea robots tried to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that is pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico early Friday in BP's latest attempt to cut down on the spill from a blown-out well that has pumped out more than 4 million gallons of crude.

The company was trying to move the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe, known as the riser. The smaller tube will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea. BP said it hopes to know by Friday evening if the tube works and can siphon the oil to a tanker at the surface.

Since an April 20 drilling rig explosion set off the catastrophic spill, BP PLC has tried several ideas to plug the leak that is spewing at least 210,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf a day. The size of the undulating spill was about 3,650 square miles, or the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, said Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.

In the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore, a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.

While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion. Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.

The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made — and what warnings might have been ignored?

"There is some delay in the replication of our data, so our operational data, our sequence of events ends at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the 20th," Steven Newman, president and CEO of Transocean Ltd, told a Senate panel. The rig blew up at 10 p.m., killing 11 workers and unleashing the gusher.

Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents several rig workers involved in the accident, questioned whether what he called "the phantom test" was even performed.

"I can just tell you that the Halliburton hands were scratching their heads," said Buzbee, whose clients include one of the Halliburton crew members responsible for cementing the well to prepare for moving the drilling rig to another site.

Details of a likely blowout scenario emerged this week for the first time from congressional and administrative hearings. They suggest there were both crew mistakes and equipment breakdowns at key points the day of the explosion.

Buzbee said that when Halliburton showed BP PLC and Transocean officials the results of the pressure tests that suggested gas was leaking, the rig workers were put on "standby." BP is the rig operator and leaseholder.

Buzbee said one of his clients told him the "Transocean and BP company people got their heads together," and 40 minutes later gave the green light.






The attorney said the Halliburton crew members were not shown any new test results.

"They said they did their own tests, and they came out OK," he said. "But with the phantom test that Transocean and BP allegedly did, there was no real record or real-time recordation of that test."

None of the three companies would comment Thursday on whether any data or test results were purposely not sent to shore, or on exactly who made the final decision to continue the operations that day.

Five thousand feet under the sea, the effort to thread the smaller tube into the larger pipe began overnight. But the crushing depth requires engineers to work slowly and carefully, BP spokesman John Crabtree said Friday.

Crews overseeing the effort hope to have a better grasp Friday evening on whether this latest method to stem the gushing oil spill is going to work, Crabtree said.

If the tube doesn't work, BP could try a second containment box, which would be placed over the well and also would siphon the oil to the surface.

In another experiment, BP might wind up shooting junk of all shapes and sizes to plug the nooks and crannies into the blowout preventer — a giant piece of machinery that's allowing some of the oil to escape. In the aptly named "junk shot," engineers would shoot pieces of tires, golf balls, knotted rope and other items into it in hopes the right size stuff makes its way to the appropriate holes. Once the leak is clogged, heavy mud will be poured in. It would then be sealed off with cement.

BP also has sprayed chemicals on the oil to break it up into smaller droplets, with about 4 million gallons of oily water recovered.

The size of the spill, as measured from satellites, seems to have grown about 50 percent from May 10 to late Thursday, said Graber from the University of Miami.

"There's a hell of a lot coming out," Graber said of the oil.

The estimate of 210,000 gallons daily from the leak comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and has frequently been cited by BP and the Coast Guard. Some scientists have said based on an analysis of BP's video of the leak that the flow rate is much higher, while others have concluded the video is too grainy to draw any such conclusions.

BP is sticking with the NOAA estimate, company spokesman Mark Proegler said Thursday. He said BP hasn't sent down equipment that might be able to more accurately measure the oil because "our focus is on stopping the leak, not measuring it."

As for the missing data, rigs like Deepwater Horizon keep a daily drilling report. It is the version of that report given to Congress that cuts off at 3 p.m.

The log confirms that three pressure tests, conducted from the morning to the early afternoon of April 20, indicated unseen underground leakage into the well. But there is no mention of a fourth test that BP and Transocean say was conducted and that they say indicated it was safe to proceed.

In the hours leading up to the explosion, workers finished pumping cement into the exploratory well to bolster and seal it against leaks until a later production phase. After the tests that indicated leakage, workers debated the next step and eventually decided to resume work, for reasons that remain unclear.

At the same time, heavy drilling fluid — or mud — was being pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead, further whittling the well's defenses. It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for dropping a final blob of cement into the well as a temporary plug for the pipe.

When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer. However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part.

Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, said the lack of offsite data storage is something he intends to look into further.

"I'm sure we'll be taking action to follow up with those requirements," he said. "Because it's critical information that would give rise to understanding of what happened and why more wasn't done to shut off the flow of oil and prevent this from happening."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Miss., La. govs contrast in responses to oil spill
By Emily Wagster Pettus And Melinda Deslatte, AP Writers Fri May 14, 4:17 am ET

JACKSON, Miss. – The ambitious Republican governors of Mississippi and Louisiana are a study in contrasts as an oil spill threatens coastal economies still reeling from Hurricane Katrina.

Mississippi's Haley Barbour, a well-connected former Washington lobbyist, has calmly said the oil slick looming offshore is just a sheen in most places and there's no reason for people to panic.

Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, meanwhile, has questioned oil giant BP PLC's response capability and the federal government's plans to clean up crude spewing from a well blown out by an offshore oil rig explosion April 20. He activated the Louisiana National Guard and called on coastal parish leaders to draw up their own response plans after saying he couldn't get answers from BP or the Coast Guard.

Both governors are considered possible 2012 presidential candidates, and their responses to the spill may say more about where they've been than where they hope to end up.

Jindal's predecessor was Kathleen Blanco, a Democrat who chose not to run for re-election after she was heavily criticized for appearing indecisive when Katrina struck in August 2005. Jindal was in Congress at the time.

"This oil literally threatens our way of life," Jindal said. "Here in Louisiana, we're going to do everything we can do. We're going to do what it takes to protect our way of life."

Barbour, 62, is a second-term governor who was in office during Katrina and was widely praised for his response to the storm. He's now chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Barbour has said the oil spill is "not Armageddon," but he believes news coverage has hurt tourism in his state.

"Come on down here and play golf, enjoy the beach, catch a fish and pay a little sales tax while you're here," Barbour said Wednesday during a televised news conference in Biloxi, Miss.

While Barbour downplays the possibility of a 2012 presidential run, he hasn't dismissed it. Jindal, 38, says he's only running for a second term as governor in 2011, not president, but the son of Indian immigrants is considered a sharp politician with a national future as his party seeks to diversify its public image.

In Mississippi, Barbour has been juggling oil-spill briefings with his response to two consecutive weekends of severe weather, starting with a deadly April 24 tornado that cut a 149-mile swath through his state.

He told The Associated Press the oil spill could be disastrous for Mississippi's coastal economy. Then he added: "But it's just as possible that what happens here will be manageable and of moderate and even minimal impact."

Oil has not started washing up on shore in any large quantities, and Barbour likened much of the spill to the gasoline sheen commonly found around ski boats.

"We don't wash our face in it, but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski," Barbour said.

While Jindal was initially slow to criticize and publicly react to the Gulf oil well blowout, he quickly stepped up his rhetoric and toughened his response as the spill worsened and fears grew about the potential damage to fragile wetlands and coastal fishing industries.

He has handled it much like he would a hurricane, holding regular news conferences with rapid-fire lists of state response efforts and weather forecasts. Such responses are a clear bid to bolster his image as the take-charge, disaster-fighting governor and escape the criticism that plagued his predecessor, who was seen as unfocused and overwhelmed after Katrina.

Both approaches have received praise. Mississippi's Democratic speaker of the House, Billy McCoy, frequently clashes with Barbour but said he respects the governor's handling of disasters.

"He knows what he's doing," McCoy said. "He moves in a hurry and makes a difference."

Bob Mann, who led Blanco's communications strategy during Katrina, said Jindal appears to be aggressively responding to the spill.

"I looked really hard to try to find something to criticize and honestly I can't," said Mann, now a Louisiana State University professor. "Based on what he knew and what we all knew at the time, what more could he have done?"

That was echoed by Jerome Moore, a roofer sitting outside a Baton Rouge seafood restaurant.

"He can't go down there and close it himself," Moore said.

But both responses to the spill also have their critics.

Louisiana state Rep. Juan LaFonta, a New Orleans Democrat running for Congress and a frequent Jindal critic, complains Jindal was too slow to declare a state of emergency. The declaration came nine days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. Early estimates of how much oil was leaking were much lower than the current 200,000-plus gallons a day.

"Because of Gov. Jindal's slow response, we are now behind the curve," LaFonta said. He added: "You're talking to a veteran of Katrina. I saw what a lackluster response did last time."

Louie Miller, executive director of the Mississippi Sierra Club, said Barbour's response shows he is an apologist for petroleum interests.

"I don't think we need to underestimate his sympathy toward that industry and his allegiance to that industry," Miller said. "He's apologizing for this and trying to downplay it, and I think that's unfortunate."

Barbour said BP, which was operating the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, was not a client of the Washington lobbying firm he helped found — previously called Barbour Griffith and Rogers but now shortened to BGR.

Since Barbour became head of the Republican Governors Association last June, records show oil companies have contributed $51,350 to RGA. Shell Oil provided the largest portion of that, $50,000. BP America gave $450.

Records show BP America gave RGA $10,000 in 2003, the first year Barbour ran for Mississippi governor. It's not possible to trace that donation directly to Barbour, but his campaign received about $2 million from RGA in 2003.

A review of Jindal's state campaign finance records from 2005 to 2009 showed no donations from BP. Jindal was elected to Congress in 2004 and 2006, and federal records show his campaign received $1,000 from BP's political action committee in 2006.

As governors, Barbour and Jindal have little influence over oil drilling in federal waters off their shores, but both have long supported it.

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[Jolie Rouge]

BP's own probe finds safety issues on Atlantis rig
By Ramit Plushnick-masti And Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press Writers 2 mins ago

HOUSTON – The company whose drilling triggered the Gulf of Mexico oil spill also owns a rig that operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents, which one official warned could "lead to catastrophic operator error," records and interviews show.

In February, two months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, 19 members of Congress called on the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling to investigate a whistle-blower's complaints about the BP-owned Atlantis, which is stationed in 7,070 feet of water more than 150 miles south of New Orleans.

The Associated Press has learned that an independent firm hired by BP substantiated the complaints in 2009 and found that the giant petroleum company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.

Stanley Sporkin, a former federal judge whose firm served as BP's ombudsman, said that the allegation "was substantiated, and that's it." The firm was hired by BP in 2006 to act as an independent office to receive and investigate employee complaints.

Engineering documents — covering everything from safety shutdown systems to blowout preventers — are meant to be roadmaps for safely starting and halting production on the huge offshore platform.

Running an oil rig with flawed and missing documentation is like cooking a dinner without a complete recipe, said University of California, Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, an oil pipeline expert who has been reviewing the whistle-blower allegations and studied the Gulf blowout.

"This is symptomatic of a sick system. This kind of sloppiness is what leads to disasters," he said. "The sloppiness on the industry side and on the government side. It's a shared problem."

BP and the Minerals and Management Service, which regulates oil drilling, did not respond to calls from the AP seeking comment on the whistle-blower allegations. But in January an attorney for BP wrote a letter to Congress saying the company is compliant with all federal requirements and the Atlantis has been operating so safely that it received an MMS award.

"BP has reviewed the allegations and found them to be unsubstantiated," said Karen K. Westall, managing attorney for BP.

The MMS is expected to complete its probe later this month.

Last month, the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank 5,000 feet to the ocean floor. Since then at least 210,000 gallons of oil a day has been leaking into the Gulf, endangering wildlife, shutting down large areas to commercial fishing and threatening coastal tourism.

Government officials and critics of the oil industry say the alleged problems with the Atlantis are further evidence of systemic safety problems and lax federal regulation of offshore drilling.

"I think it's a legitimate area of concern to ask serious questions about any rig that bears any similarity whatsoever to the Deepwater Horizon," said Richard Charter, a senior policy advisor with Defenders of Wildlife. "If we've got another Deepwater Horizon waiting to happen, we'd better know about it soon."

BP operates and holds 56 percent ownership in the Atlantis. The company leased the Deepwater Horizon from Transocean Ltd.

The Atlantis subcontractor who lodged the complaint was Kenneth Abbott. He was laid off in February 2009 and said in a written statement a few months later that he believes it was partly in retaliation, which the company denied.

When reached by the AP, Abbott said, "I had complained about BP's problem," but declined to elaborate.

In a statement read on an October 8, 2009, conference call he said he has 20 years of experience as a project control supervisor on various engineering projects and that part of his concern about rig safety stems for the fact that he lives on the Gulf and enjoys recreation on its waters.

"I have never been against offshore production because I believe it can be done safely but I am very concerned that BP is acting unsafely and that it may lead to a disastrous spill in the Gulf ... " he said, according to a copy of the statement.

Sporkin, the former judge who heads the Washington, D.C.-based ombudsman office hired by BP, told the AP his office found in August 2009 that BP's execution plan for the Atlantis called for all documents to be finalized and onboard before production started.

"That did not happen," Sporkin said.

Last month, Sporkin's deputy, Billie Pirner Garde, indicated in an e-mail to Abbott that BP had long known there was a document problems aboard the Atlantis.

"It was ... of concern to others who raised the concern before you worked there, while you were there and after you left," she wrote. "Your raising the issue did not result in any change to the schedule of BP addressing the issues."

BP production member Barry C. Duff said in an August 2008 e-mail to two colleagues that "hundreds if not thousands" of subsea documents had not been finalized, and warned having the wrong documents on board the Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator errors."

Abbott provided e-mails, a BP database and other documents to an environmental group called Food & Water Watch, based in Washington. The AP obtained copies.

Members of Congress were provided the documents and a report by Mike Sawyer, a safety engineering consultant who previously assisted the plaintiffs in a suit aginst BP after the 2005 explosion at its Texas City, Texas refinery that killed 15 workers.

Sawyer reviewed a database detailing the status of thousands of Atlantis safety-related engineering documents provided by Abbott. He concluded in May 2009 that the majority were incomplete, introducing "substantial risk of large-scale damage to the deep water Gulf of Mexico environment and harm to workers."

Sawyer said he found that about 85 percent of the piping and instrument designs "have no final approval" and more than 95 percent of the welding specifications had no approval at all.

"I think it's very serious," said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who led the call for an investigation. "I think it speaks to the lack of the federal government's ability to protect its own public property. It speaks to the opportunism and advantage these companies took of the taxpayer."

More than a year after Abbott first lodged his complaint, it remains unclear whether BP updated the documents.

Sporkin said BP told his office the company was not federally required to have the documents on board the Atlantis and could change its execution plan at any time.

Sporkin said BP recently told his office they had fixed the problem, yet provided no written documentation.

Kenneth Arnold, a consultant to the offshore oil and gas industry for safety and project management, read the whistleblower's allegations.

Without knowing which documents were incomplete, Arnold said it would be difficult to draw any conclusions as too how much of a threat the omissions might be. When his company worked on BP projects, Arnold said they were sticklers.

"If anything they're so anal about these processes they require more engineering and man hours than I think might be necessary," said Arnold who recently retired after 45 years in the industry. "If I had a complaint about BP, it is they were too detailed. People are piling on."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Salazar: Latest effort to stop oil leak hits snag
By Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press Writer 45 mins ago

HAMMOND, La. – At first, BP tried to stop the oil rushing into the Gulf of Mexico by flipping a blowout preventer switch. A week ago, they attempted to capture the leak with a 100-ton box. Now they've hit a snag as they try to guide a mile-long tube into the gusher to siphon the oil.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said BP PLC had a problem Saturday with the latest effort to stop the leak, but was continuing its work at the ocean floor.

"There was a problem. They had to reconfigure. They are back down again ... trying to get it inserted," he told reporters during a briefing at a bird rescue facility in Louisiana, declining to offer further information.

BP has offered scant details of its progress in trying to thread the 6-inch tube into the 21-inch pipe spewing oil from the ocean floor. Company spokesmen said technicians are continuing the methodical work that began early Friday of using joysticks to guide the deep-sea robots that are manipulating the contraption. They wouldn't elaborate on Salazar's report.

"We've never done such operations before and we need to take our time to get it right," spokesman Jon Pack said in an e-mail Saturday after Salazar's comments.

The company planned to brief reporters on the tube work in the afternoon. The tube is intended to suck oil up like a straw to a tanker on the surface, while a stopper surrounding it would keep crude from leaking into the sea.

Other efforts to fight the spill continued above and below the surface. The company received word Friday that federal regulators had approved spraying chemical dispersants beneath the sea, a contentious development because it has never been done underwater.

More than three weeks after the oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the disastrous spill, President Barack Obama assailed oil drillers and his own administration Friday as he ordered extra scrutiny of drilling permits. He condemned a "ridiculous spectacle" of oil executives shifting blame in congressional hearings and denounced a "cozy relationship" between the companies and the federal government.

"I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden, flanked by members of his Cabinet.

"The system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it," the president said.

But the president, who had earlier announced a limited expansion of offshore drilling that's now on hold, didn't back down from his support for domestic oil drilling.

Obama's tone was a marked departure from the deliberate approach and mild chiding that had characterized his response since the rig went up in flames April 20 and sank two days later. At least 210,000 gallons of oil has been leaking into the Gulf each day, and BP has sought to burn the crude off the surface of the water, as well as use the chemical dispersants.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said Friday that three underwater dispersant tests conducted at the leak site proved helpful at keeping oil from reaching the surface. Traditionally used on the surface, chemical dispersants act like a detergent to break the oil into small globules, which allows it to disperse more quickly into the water or air before currents can wash it ashore.

So far more than 517,000 gallons of dispersants, most of which is a product called Corexit 9500 previously approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for use on the sea surface only, have been dropped over the spill or shot undersea.

Corexit 9500 is identified as a "moderate" human health hazard that can cause eye, skin or respiratory irritation with prolonged exposure, according to safety data documents. Louisiana Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine said federal regulators dismissed state worries about the chemicals.

"Our concerns about the use of these dispersants underwater is based on the fact that there is virtually no science that supports the use of those chemicals," Levine said.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said she reserves the right to halt the use of chemical dispersants at any time if new data show more serious environmental harm is occurring.

The Obama administration insists its response has been aggressive ever since the spill started, and the president said he shared the anger and frustration of those affected. He announced that the Interior Department would review whether the Minerals Management Service is following all environmental laws before issuing permits for offshore oil and gas development.

BP's drilling operation at Deepwater Horizon received a "categorical exclusion," which allows for expedited oil and gas drilling without the detailed environmental review that normally is required.

Obama already had announced a 30-day review of safety procedures on oil rigs and at wells before any additional oil leases could be granted. And earlier in the week Salazar announced plans to split the much-criticized Minerals Management Service into two agencies, one that would be charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, while the other would oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties. Salazar has said the plan will ensure there is no conflict, "real or perceived," regarding the agency's functions.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill: six lessons
By the Monitor's Editorial Board Fri May 14, 3:28 pm ET

The lessons to be learned from the Gulf oil leak are as broad as the spill itself from the slicks on the surface to the globules on the shore, with others still unknown due to lack of information from the depths.

It’s been three weeks since the April 20 explosion sunk the BP-managed oil rig and killed 11 people. The resulting megaspill underscores improvements that must be made in oil production, oversight, and consumption.

This week, for instance, six West Coast senators proposed a permanent ban on drilling in the Pacific. The blowout in the Gulf has pushed to the foreground memories of the 1969 oil rig disaster off the California coast.

A permanent ban may be desirable, but those seeking to protect America’s waters must realize that not-near-my-beach bans in the United States put pressure to drill elsewhere in the world (Lesson No. 1). And “elsewhere” can have very low or nonexistent environmental standards, such as in Nigeria.

The US relies on oil imports from that West African coastal nation, but along with oil, Nigeria also produces oil spills – the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez pouring out about every year.

The way to relieve drilling pressure in faraway lands is to consume less oil at home (Lesson No. 2). Rising gasoline prices put the brakes on consumption, but it sure would help if Congress passed an energy bill that raises the cost of fossil fuels and supports renewables (Lesson No. 3). One was introduced in the Senate this week, but it could now be in trouble because of its offshore oil drilling provision – originally intended to attract buy-in from senators with ties to the oil industry.

Perhaps it’s time to forget that provision, given the situation in the Gulf. Lawmakers need to find the spine to say no to the oil and gas industry (Lesson No. 4). The industry’s lobby has muscle and gives generously to candidates at election time – about as much as the commercial banking industry (America saw what that did to oversight of Wall Street). Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana is the biggest recipient of donations from BP in Congress. Appearances matter, even if influence is hard to trace.

Easier to trace is the relationship between the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which regulates offshore oil drilling, and the oil companies it regulates. As President Obama admitted Friday, those ties are too “cozy,” a conclusion backed up by 2008 reports from the Interior Department’s inspector general. In hearings this week it was revealed that the industry that makes blowout preventers – the crucial piece of equipment meant to stop leaks – is self-regulated.

The conflict of interest within the MMS is that the agency collects fees and royalties (worth $13 billion annually to the federal government) and also gives out drilling permits and leases.

This week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar moved to split the agency, separating the inspecting and enforcing side from the leasing and fee-collecting side. But how does this break the core conflict of interest? Fundamental reform of MMS is required (Lesson No. 5).

Last, compared with its relatively good record, this time the industry has grossly fallen down on the job. It promised fail-safe drilling, and it didn’t deliver. It promised disaster preparedness, and it’s not prepared for anything close to this scope. On Capitol Hill this week, executives from BP, Transocean, and Halliburton pointed fingers at each other. A new ethic of responsibility needs to take root here (Lesson No. 6).

This tragedy, because of its immensity, now requires immense reform of the oil industry and its patrons, from the depths of the Gulf to the halls of Congress.

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comments

The conflict of interest within the MMS is that the agency collects fees and royalties (worth $13 billion annually to the federal government) and also gives out drilling permits and leases. Last, compared with its relatively good record, this time the industry has grossly fallen down on the job. It promised fail-safe drilling, and it didn’t deliver. It promised disaster preparedness, and it’s not prepared for anything close to this scope. On Capitol Hill this week, executives from BP, Transocean, and Halliburton pointed fingers at each other. A new ethic of responsibility needs to take root here (Lesson No. 6).

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The MMS like most federal agencies is totally inept. Why? Because it is full of under qualified government employees and headed by political appointees who have no experience. Just imagine a guy with a BS degree in Physics trying to oversee Einstein's work. The government doesn't attract the best it attracts the people who couldn't get a job out of college and most stay in the system their entire careers because it is a gravy train working for the government. The entire system of government in the USA is broken, absolutely nothing works as it should. Oil will cover our coasts, we are all slaves to banks and big business with the government taxing us into the grave. We are spending ourselves to death fighting 2 wars we can't win and never should have started. This is not the way things should be.

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1) permenant ban is dumb. it's called working the problem.
2) As a Native CA; all my life it's always been conserve save and recycle... so many here are not born and raised here...
3) it's a tax; so call it one. I cannot support taxing one industry to give it to another. Since ultimately; it's the people that pay the tax, Period.
4) All lobbists need to go; including Green. It's all about peddling influence and our congress has forgotten that it's us they represent. We may not 'pay their campaign'; but we are truely the ones that keep them employed and allow them to remain so.
5) It's a start. So are criminal charges. If a Doctor that spends 100's of $$$; 20-30years in school; gets 5 gunshot victims dropped in their ER and low and behold; they are sued because in that life and death situation; some lawyer claims they picked the wrong patient to start on. Isn't this malpractice at the MMS??
6) In basic agreement. It should be international that all oil companies jointly develop a plan to deal with worst case scenarios. One that would go under periodic reviews and TESTING... ie. they would have known about the dome freezing because a test would have shown that... instead.. it's all live testing...

The reason they are finger pointing is because of lawsuits. This is going to be massive. It will be much easier to vilify halliburton because of the iraq war and george bush... and easier to sue and get money from also

Questions: Could Obama's response been calculated (and backfired?? as in the leak was 'underestimated'??) to try and get cap and trade and greeen energy a jump start??

Just a thought.....

[Jolie Rouge]

Federal inspections on rig not as claimed
By Justin Pritchard, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 50 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that inspections be done at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

Since January 2005, the federal Minerals Management Service conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under the policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of prior years, according to the agency's records.

Under a revised statement given to the AP on Sunday, MMS officials said the last infraction aboard the rig, which blew up April 20, killing 11 and spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in August 2003, not March 2007 as originally stated.

The inspection gaps and poor recordkeeping are the latest in a series of questions raised about the agency's oversight of the offshore oil drilling industry. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have criticized what they call the cozy relationship between regulators and oil companies and have vowed to reform MMS, which both regulates the industry and collects billions in royalties from it.

Earlier AP investigations have shown that the doomed rig was allowed to operate without safety documentation required by MMS regulations for the exact disaster scenario that occurred; that the cutoff valve which failed has repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since regulators weakened testing requirements; and that regulation is so lax that some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work.

The AP sought to find out how many times government safety inspectors visited the Deepwater Horizon, and what they found. In response, MMS officials offered a changing series of numbers.

At first, officials said 83 inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the Gulf 104 months ago, in September 2001. While being questioned about the once-per-month claim, the officials subsequently revised the total up to 88 inspections. The number of more recent inspections also changed — from 26 to 48 in the 64 months since January 2005.

No explanation was given initially for the upward revisions. On Sunday, the officials said additional inspections were discovered after MMS gathered more information from a deeper examination of its databases.

AP granted MMS officials anonymity because without that condition, communications staff at the Interior Department, which oversees MMS, would not have let them talk.

Reacting to the latest disclosures, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va., said while he applauded Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's remedial actions, it seems "MMS has been asleep at the switch in terms of policing offshore rigs." He said the committee, slated to hold hearings May 26-27, will examine these issues "in the context of what our offshore leasing program will look like in the future."

Added Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., "While our priority now is to do everything possible to stop this spill and mitigate further damage, the administration's actions will be a major component of what we investigate."

Based on the last set of numbers provided, the Deepwater Horizon was inspected 40 times during its first 40 months in the Gulf — in line with agency policy.

Even using the more favorable numbers for the most recent 64 months, 25 percent of monthly inspections were not performed. The first set of data supplied to AP represented a 59 percent shortfall in the number of inspections.

Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff would not comment on the inspection numbers. Instead, she offered a general statement: "We are looking at all the questions that are coming out of the Deepwater Horizon incident."

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by AP, the agency has released copies of only three inspection reports, from Feb. 17, March 3 and April 1. According to the documents, inspectors spent two hours or less each time they visited the massive rig. Some information appeared to be "whited out," without explanation.

In an e-mail to AP, an Interior Department official emphasized with italics that the MMS inspects rigs "at least once a month" when drilling is under way. Monthly inspections are an agency policy, though not required by regulation, said David Dykes, chief of the agency's office of safety management for the Gulf region.

Last week, at a joint Coast Guard-MMS investigatory hearing in Kenner, La., Michael Saucier, MMS's regional supervisor for field operations in the Gulf, said about inspections aboard the oil rigs: "We perform them at a minimum once a month, but we can do more if need be."

The job falls to the 55 inspectors in the Gulf who are supposed to visit the 90 drilling rigs once per month and the approximately 3,500 oil production platforms once per year.

The Deepwater Horizon's inspection frequency numbers struck Kenneth Arnold, a veteran offshore drilling consultant and engineer.

"I'd certainly question it," he said. "I'd ask, 'Why aren't you doing it?'"

When the AP did ask, MMS and Interior would not answer directly. Instead providing a set of conditions when a rig would not typically be inspected — including during bad weather or when it is jumping among short-term jobs.

Transocean Ltd., which owned the Deepwater Horizon and leased it to BP PLC, would not provide a detailed accounting of the rig's activity history. According to RigData, a Texas firm that monitors offshore activity in the Gulf, the Deepwater Horizon was working approximately 2,896 days of the 3,131 days since it started its first well — about 93 percent of the time. That number represents the total number of days between when it broke the seafloor during a drilling operation to when it was released to another site.

A summary of the inspection history said the Deepwater Horizon received six "incidents of noncompliance" — the agency's term for citations.

The most serious occurred July 16, 2002, when the rig was shut down because required pressure tests had not been conducted on parts of the blowout preventer — the device that was supposed to stop oil from gushing out if drilling operations went wrong.

That citation was "major," said Arnold, who characterized the overall safety record related by MMS as strong.

A citation on Sept. 19, 2002, also involved the blowout preventer. The inspector issued a warning because "problems or irregularities observed during the testing of BOP system and actions taken to remedy such problems or irregularities are not recorded in the driller's report or referenced documents."

During his Senate testimony last week, Transocean CEO Steven Newman said the blowout preventer was modified in 2005.

According to MMS officials, the four other citations were:

• Two on May 16, 2002, for not conducting well control drills as required and not performing "all operations in a safe and workmanlike manner."

• One on Aug. 6, 2003, for discharging pollutants into the Gulf.

• One on March 20, 2007, which prompted inspectors to shut down some machinery because of improper electrical grounding.

Late last week, several days after providing the detailed accounting, Interior officials told AP that in fact there had been only five citations, that one had been rescinded. The officials said they could not immediately say which of the six had been rescinded.

On Sunday, MMS officials said the 2007 citation was rescinded following an informal appeal, which they said can be granted by an inspector's boss. In this case, further review showed the equipment in question complied with regulations, the officials said.

The agency's problems with providing information extends to the data on display on its website. For example, the accounting of accident and incident reports is incomplete, making it very difficult to perform a thorough data analysis of the agency's performance and preventing a full accurate tracking of safety records of the rigs.

Data problems go back at least a decade. According to John Shultz, who as a graduate student in the late 1990s studied MMS' inspection program in depth for his dissertation, the agency's data infrastructure was severely limited.

"If you have the data you need, the analysis becomes fairly straightforward. Without the data, you're simply stuck with conjectures," said Shultz, who now works in the Department of Energy's nuclear program.

The strong inspection record led MMS last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

The Deepwater Horizon's record was so exemplary, according to MMS officials, that the rig was never on inspectors' informal "watch list" for problem rigs.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Mile-long tube sucking oil away from Gulf well
By Jeffrey Collins And Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writers 4 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures.

Millions of gallons of crude are already in the water, however, and researchers said the black ooze may have entered a major current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and around to the East Coast.

BP PLC engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea. After several setbacks, the contraption was hooked up successfully and funneling oil to a tanker ship. The oil giant said it will take days to figure out how much oil its contraption is sucking up.

The blown well has been leaking for more than three weeks, threatening sea life, commercial fishing and the coastal tourist industry from Louisiana to Florida. BP failed in several previous attempts to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton container that got clogged with icy crystals.

A researcher told The Associated Press on Sunday that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent next week to collect samples and learn more.

William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one model shows oil has already entered the current, while a second shows the oil is 3 miles from it — still dangerously close. The models are based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.

Hogarth said it's still too early to know what specific amounts of oil will make it to Florida, or what damage it might do to the sensitive Keys or beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast. He said claims by BP that the oil would be less damaging to the Keys after traveling over hundreds of miles from the spill site were not mollifying.

"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem.'" Hogarth said. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."

BP had previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. On Sunday, the company said it was too early to measure how much crude was being collected and acknowledged the tube was no panacea.

"It's a positive move, but let's keep in context," said Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president for exploration and production. "We're about shutting down the flow of oil from this well."

Crews will slowly ramp up how much oil the tube collects over the next few days. They need to move slowly because they don't want too much frigid seawater entering the pipe, which could combine with gases to form the same ice-like crystals that doomed the previous containment effort.

Two setbacks over the weekend illustrate how delicate the effort is. Early Sunday, hours before a steady connection was made, engineers were able to suck a small amount of oil to the tanker, but the tube was dislodged. The previous day, equipment used to insert the tube into the gushing pipe at the ocean floor had to be hauled to the surface for readjustment.

The first chance to choke off the flow for good should come in about a week. Engineers plan to shoot heavy mud into the crippled blowout preventer on top of the well, then permanently entomb the leak in concrete. If that doesn't work, crews also can shoot golf balls and knotted rope into the nooks and crannies of the device to plug it, Wells said.

The final choice to end the leak is a relief well, but it is more than two months from completion.

Top officials in President Barack Obama's administration cautioned that the tube "is not a solution" to the spill and said they are closely monitoring the situation.

"We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a joint statement.

Meanwhile, scientists warned of the effects of the oil that has already leaked into the Gulf. Researchers said miles-long underwater plumes of oil discovered in recent days could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more.

Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles, with a 3-mile width.

The hazardous effects of the plume are twofold. Joye said the oil itself can prove toxic to fish swimming in the sea, while vast amounts of oxygen are also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil are also food for the microbes, speeding up the oxygen depletion.

"So, first you have oily water that may be toxic to certain organisms and also the oxygen issue, so there are two problems here," said Joye, who's working with the scientists who discovered the plumes in a recent boat expedition. "This can interrupt the food chain at the lowest level, and will trickle up and certainly impact organisms higher. Whales, dolphins and tuna all depend on lower depths to survive."

Conservationists in Florida said oil could wreak havoc in the Keys or the environmentally fragile Everglades.

"Obviously this is a fear that we had about where the oil might go next," said John Adornato, regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Oil has been spewing since the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 people and sinking two days later. The government shortly afterward estimated the spill at 210,000 gallons — or 5,000 barrels — a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate while acknowledging there's no way to know for sure.

News of the tube's success was met with tempered enthusiasm by the leader of a coastal parish in Lousiana that includes environmentally sensitive marshes and islands.

"It's definitely good news," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after a BP vice president called to brief him.

"It will be better news when they get it stopped," he said, noting the underwater oil plumes. "We have a large mess out there."


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[Jolie Rouge]

Models indicate Gulf spill may be in major current
By Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writer Sun May 16, 3:51 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – Researchers tracking the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico say computer models show the black ooze may have already entered a major current flowing toward the Florida Keys, and are sending out a research vessel to learn more.

William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, told The Associated Press Sunday that one model shows that the oil has already the loop current, which is the largest in the Gulf. The model is based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.

Hogarth said a second model shows the oil is 3 miles from the current — still dangerously close.

The current flows in a looping pattern in the Gulf, through the area where the blown-out well is, east to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

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Music fans brave storm for Gulf Aid concert
2 hrs 16 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Music fans braved a torrential rainstorm in New Orleans for a benefit concert raising money for fishermen affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Ani DiFranco, Allen Toussaint and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, with Mos Def, headlined the "Gulf Aid" concert Sunday.

The Gulf Relief Foundation is a nonprofit formed in the spill's aftermath. It says its beneficiaries would include the region's seafood industry and the restoration of coastal wetlands.

Clay Latime of New Orleans and her partner, Mindy Milam say they fear the spill's toll on wetlands will further erode the region's first line of defense against a hurricane.

Milam says she just keeps think it's a very bad dream.


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[Jolie Rouge]

Coast Guard says it never foresaw this oil spill
By Eileen Sullivan And Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writers 4 mins ago


WASHINGTON – Coast Guard Rear Adm. Peter Neffenger says the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is beyond what anyone anticipated.

Neffenger tells senators Monday that, at a minimum, officials will go back and look at how future response plans should be revised. Neffenger is the deputy national incident commander at the Coast Guard.

Neffenger and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (neh-pahl-ih-TAN'-oh) are the first two administration officials to testify on Capitol Hill about the deadly oil spill.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ahead of anticipated tough questioning on Capitol Hill about the Gulf Coast spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday the government will tighten requirements for onshore oil and gas drilling. The new measures would not apply to oil rigs at sea.

Salazar was expected to testify Tuesday at two Senate oversight hearings investigating the BP oil spill off Louisiana's coast. Last week, President Barack Obama said responsibility for what he described as a badly failed system extended to the federal government and its "cozy" relationship with oil companies.

Salazar, whose department includes the federal Minerals Management Service, which manages the nation's natural gas, oil and other mineral resources, portrayed the changes at the Bureau of Land Management as a response to the BP oil spill, even though they apply only to onshore drilling for oil and natural gas.

"The BP oil spill is a stark reminder of how we must continue to push ahead with the reforms we have been working on and which we know are needed," Salazar said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, meanwhile, was expected to defend the government's response to the Gulf Coast spill in the Obama administration's first congressional testimony on the incident.

BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay was also expected to testify Monday. McKay and executives from other companies involved in the operation of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were on Capitol Hill last week.

Obama last week called their testimony a "ridiculous spectacle" of shifting blame for the deadly incident.

Salazar said the reforms announced Monday will ensure that the land management bureau will seek public comments before pursuing oil and gas leases in new areas, and that federal officials visit a potential drilling site before any leases are approved.

The government also will tighten requirements for when an approval process known as a "categorical exclusion" is offered on federal lands, he said. Those exclusions allow for expedited oil and gas drilling without detailed environmental reviews that normally are required. The Government Accountability Office has found that the land management bureau has frequently misinterpreted and violated a federal law allowing categorical exclusions.

Obama said last week that the administration would review whether the Minerals Management Service — another Interior Department agency — is following all environmental laws before issuing permits for offshore oil and gas development. BP's drilling operation at Deepwater Horizon received a "categorical exclusion" that exempted from normal environmental reviews.

"It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies," Obama said Friday.

Salazar, a former Democratic senator from Colorado, announced the onshore reforms in January, but said Monday's announcement would direct federal land managers how to carry out the reforms.

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A fisherman holds up an oil-stained bouy that washed up on the beach at South Pass near the mouth of the Mississippi River on May 14, near Venice, Louisiana. BP succeeded Sunday in capturing "some" oil and gas by inserting a mile-long tube into the main Gulf of Mexico leak, but would not say if it was just a dribble or a significant percentage of the gusher...

BP says it will permanently cap leaking well
By Jeffrey Collins And Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writers 12 mins ago


NEW ORLEANS – BP says it will never again try to produce oil through a blown-out well that's been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly a month.

The oil has been leaking since an offshore drilling rig exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana last month.

BP has been trying a variety of techniques to suck up the oil ever since. One finally started this working this week, but it's still only capturing a fraction of the oil.

BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles says the company will never again try to produce oil through the well. He says the right thing to do is plug the well.

BP did not rule out the company drilling elsewhere to tap the same reservoir.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP says it has started drilling a second relief well at the site where an offshore oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana.

Rig operator BP PLC, which is responsible for the clean-up, is using a long tube to siphon some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, but the relief wells are a more permanent solution.

It will be months before they're complete. Drilling on the original relief well has been underway for weeks. The second is a back-up well.

BP is also getting ready to try a procedure known as a top-kill that uses a tube to shoot mud and concrete directly into a device on the well known as the blowout preventer.

The process would take two to three weeks and BP hopes it would stop the flow of oil. But the relief wells will be drilled either way.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100517/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AnbypeFWJU.0dlyWoo0XWXis0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTJlZmJjNzllBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNTE3L3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3Bvc HVsYXIEc2xrA2Jwc2F5c2l0d2lsbA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP hopes to siphon up to half of oil in Gulf
By Jeffrey Collins And Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writers 24 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP said Monday it hopes to siphon as much as half of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico and is getting ready to shoot mud into a blown-out well later this week to try and stop all of it.

BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles said at a press conference that the company will never again try to produce oil from the well, though BP did not rule out drilling elsewhere in the reservoir.

"The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that's what we will do," Suttles said.

Meanwhile, scientists said they were concerned about the ooze reaching a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.

Suttles said a mile-long tube is funneling a little more than 42,000 gallons of crude a day from a blown-out well into a tanker ship.

That would be about a fifth of the 210,000 gallons the company and the U.S. Coast Guard have estimated are gushing out each day, though scientists who have studied video of the leak say it could be much bigger and even BP acknowledges there's no way to know for sure how much oil there is.

Suttles said the siphoning does appear to be removing some oil from the surface of the ocean and BP would be pleased if it eventually captures half of it.

"Our efforts offshore are making a big difference now," he said.

In the nearly a month since an oil rig called the Deepwater Horizon exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers, BP has made several failed attempts to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton container that got clogged with icy crystals.

Chemicals being sprayed underwater are helping to disperse the oil and keep it from washing ashore in great quantities. But millions of gallons are already in the Gulf, and researchers said that in recent days they have discovered miles-long underwater plumes of oil that could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more.

Tar balls have been sporadically washing up on beaches in several states, including Mississippi, where at least 60 have been found.

Engineers finally got the contraption to siphon the oil working Sunday after several setbacks. BP PLC engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea.

Crews will slowly increase how much the tube is collecting over the next few days. They need to move slowly because they don't want too much frigid seawater entering the pipe, which could combine with gases to form the same ice-like crystals that doomed the previous containment effort.

The company said Monday that it has started drilling a second well to relieve pressure on the blown-out well and also getting ready to try a procedure known as a top-kill that uses a tube to shoot mud and concrete directly into a device on the well called the blowout preventer. Both of those procedures should stop all of the oil.

As engineers worked to get a better handle on the spill, a researcher told The Associated Press that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent later this week to collect samples and learn more.

"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem,'" said William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."

Hogarth said a computer model shows oil has already entered the loop current, while a second shows the oil is 3 miles from it — still dangerously close. The models are based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.

Hogarth said it's still too early to know what specific amounts of oil will make it to Florida, or what damage it might do to the sensitive Keys or beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast. He said claims by BP that the oil would be less damaging to the Keys after traveling over hundreds of miles from the spill site were not mollifying.

Once it reaches the tanker, the oil is being separated from the natural gas and sea water. The natural gas is being burned off, while the crude is being sent to oil terminals.

Meanwhile, scientists warned of the effects of the oil that has already leaked into the Gulf.

Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia.

"The discovery of these plumes argues that a lot more oil and gas is coming out of that well every day, and I think everybody has gotten that fact except BP," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100517/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AqDXUdzxVn_YoL54JfqWuUOs0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTFpdTZ1dGdpBHBvcwM0MARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9 uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDYnBob3Blc3Rvc2lw

[Jolie Rouge]

Scientists worry current could carry oil to Keys
By Jeffrey Collins And Matt Sedensky, Associated Press Writers 15 mins ago

ROBERT, La. – With BP finally gaining some control over the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are increasingly worried that huge plumes of crude already spilled could get caught in a current that would carry the mess all the way to the Florida Keys and beyond, damaging coral reefs and killing wildlife.

Scientists said the oil will move into the so-called loop current soon if it hasn't already, though they could not say exactly when or how much there would be. Once it is in the loop, it could take 10 days or longer to reach the Keys.

"It's only a question of when," said Peter Ortner, a University of Miami oceanographer.

In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers, BP has struggled to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton box that got clogged with icy crystals. Over the weekend, the oil company finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon some of the gushing oil into a tanker, but millions of gallons are already in the Gulf.

The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Some scientists project the current will draw the crude through the Keys and then up Florida's Atlantic Coast, where the oil might avoid the beaches of Miami and Fort Lauderdale but could wash up around Palm Beach.

Many scientists expect the oil to get no farther north than Cape Canaveral, midway up the coast, before it is carried out to sea and becomes more and more diluted.

The pollution could endanger Florida's shoreline mangroves, seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the 221-mile-long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which helps draw millions of snorkelers, fishermen and other tourists whose dollars are vital to the state's economy.

Pollutants can smother and kill corals — living creatures that excrete a hard exterior skeleton — or can hinder their ability to reproduce and grow. That, in turn, could harm thousands of species of exotic and colorful fish and other marine life that live in and around reefs.

In other developments:

• Chris Oynes, who oversees offshore drilling programs at the federal Minerals Management Service, will retire at the end of the month, becoming the Interior Department's first casualty of the disaster. Oynes has been criticized as too cozy with the oil industry.

• The White House will establish a presidential commission to investigate the spill, according to an administration official speaking of condition of anonymity.

• California Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats are calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation.

• BP said it has spent $500 million on the spill so far.

• The oil company said it will never again try to produce oil from the well, though it did not rule out drilling elsewhere in the reservoir. "The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that's what we will do," said Doug Suttles, BP chief operating officer.

William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one computer model showed oil had already entered the loop current, while a second model showed the oil was three miles from it. Mike Sole, Florida's environmental protection secretary, said the edge could still be two to 18 miles away.

BP said it is having some success with a mile-long tube that is funneling a little more than 42,000 gallons of crude a day from the well into a tanker ship. That would be about a fifth of the 210,000 gallons the company estimated is gushing out each day, though scientists who have studied video of the leak say it could be much bigger.

Crews will slowly increase how much they are collecting over the next few days. They need to move slowly to prevent the formation of the ice-like crystals that doomed the effort to lower a big concrete-and-steel box over the blown-out well.

BP initially said it hoped the system would capture most of the leaking oil, but Suttles said Monday that officials would be pleased if the tube eventually sucks up half of it.

The siphoning is not a permanent solution. BP is preparing to shoot a mixture known as drilling mud into the well later this week in a procedure called a "top-kill" that would take several weeks but, if successful, would stop the flow altogether. Two relief wells are also being drilled to pump cement into the well to close it, but that will take months.

Chemicals being sprayed underwater are helping to disperse the oil and keep it from washing ashore in great quantities, but researchers said that in recent days they have discovered miles-long underwater plumes of oil that could poison or suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could last for a decade or more.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that the researchers' announcement of the oil plumes was premature and that further tests are needed to confirm that the plumes detected were indeed caused by the blowout.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AiZtbsGM40eSx9PzWhpSX4ys0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTNobW5ucm1uBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNTE4L3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb 3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9 yeQRzbGsDc2NpZW50aXN0c3dv

[Jolie Rouge]

Spill reinforces oil bad will for American Indians
By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer Tue May 18, 5:53 am ET

POINTE-AU-CHIEN, La. – Like many American Indians on the bayou, Emary Billiot blames oil companies for ruining his ancestral marsh over the decades. Still, he's always been able to fish — but now even that is not a certainty.

An oil spill — 5 million gallons and counting — spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has closed bays and lakes in Louisiana's bountiful delta, including fishing grounds that feed the last American-Indian villages in three parishes. It is a bitter blow for the tribes of south Louisiana who charge that drilling has already destroyed their swamps and that oil and land companies illegally grabbed vast areas.

"Once the oil gets in the marshes, it's all over, that's where your shrimp spawn," said Billiot, a wiry fisherman with tough hands, his fingernails caked with bayou dirt.

"Then we're in trouble," he said in a heavy French-Indian accent.

In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers, BP PLC has struggled to stop the leak from a blown-out underwater well. Over the weekend, engineers finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon some of the gushing oil into a tanker.

In Pointe-Au-Chien, 60-year-old Sydney Verdin felt a tingle of vengeful satisfaction at BP PLC's misfortune over the oil spill.

"I'm happy for the oil spill. Now the oil companies are paying for it the same way we've had to pay for it," said Verdin, disabled by a stroke, as he sat in his living room and watched his grandchildren play.

Even before the leak, oil's influence on the south Louisiana landscape was unmistakable. Signs warning about underground pipelines are everywhere. So are plastic poles in canals to show the pipelines' location. Out in the marsh, oil and gas facilities are often the only lights visible at night.

Since the 1930s, oil and natural gas companies dug about 10,000 miles of canals, straight as Arizona highways, through the oak and cypress forests, black mangroves, bird rushes and golden marshes. If lined up in a row, the canals would stretch nearly halfway around the world.

They funneled salt water into the marshes, killing trees and grass and hastening erosion. Some scientists say drilling caused half of Louisiana's land loss, or about 1,000 square miles.

"If you see pictures from the sky, how many haphazard cuts were made in the land, it blows your mind," said Patty Ferguson, a member of the Pointe-Au-Chien tribe. "We weren't just fishermen. We raised crops, we had wells. We can't anymore because of the salt water intrusion."

As companies intensified their search for petroleum in the 20th century, communities where the Choctaw, Chitimacha, Houma, Attakapas and Biloxi tribes married Europeans in the 1800s have seen their way of life disappear.

"This is not a two-week story, but a hundred-year story," said Michael Dardar, historian with the United Houma Nation tribe. "Coastal erosion, land loss and more vulnerability to hurricanes and flooding all trace back to this century of unchecked economic development."

Oil companies have long argued that their drilling in south Louisiana consistently was approved by federal and state agencies and did not violate the law. Most attempts to get oil companies to fill in the canals have failed in court. Land claims have proven hard to win because south Louisiana's American Indians have not won recognition as sovereign tribes by the federal government.

The damage didn't end with the canals. U.S. Geological Survey scientists say sucking so much oil and gas out of the ground likely caused the land in many places to sink by half an inch a year. In boom days in the 1970s, Louisiana's coastal wells pumped 360 million barrels a year, an eighth of what Saudi Arabia ships to the market today.

Oil wells also discharged about a billion gallons daily of brine, thick with naturally occurring chemicals like chlorides, calcium and magnesium, as well as acids used in drilling.

To many Indians, oil has meant an unmitigated disaster.

"They never done nothing for me," Billiot said.

Pointing across canals and open water at the village's edge, he said: "You see where all that water is: It was all hard ground. You could walk from here all the way out there. They started making cuts, the water come in. It didn't take too many days to make a canal. A big machine and they're done. One little stream of water here, after so many years it eat up, and that's why everything is wide open right now."

In addition, American Indians say land and oil companies seized swamps that rightfully belonged to them. They've sued unsuccessfully to regain vast areas now owned by large landholding and energy companies.

Joel Waltzer, a New Orleans lawyer who's worked on an aboriginal land claims lawsuit for the Pointe-Au-Chien tribe, said Indian tribes were so isolated they missed the opportunity to claim ownership of swamplands after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

"They were not English speaking; they were completely illiterate and they had no means to make it to New Orleans and make their claim," Waltzer said.

Much of south Louisiana was claimed by the federal government and sold off at 19th-century auctions to land companies. By the 1900s, oil companies bought much of the land in south Louisiana. Allegations abound among Indians that oil companies hoodwinked them into selling even the small bits of land they owned.

"They take the land. That was years ago," said Ranzel Billiot, a 30-year-old shrimper and one of Emary Billiot's cousins. "A lot of the older people they took the land from didn't know how to read or write."

About 40 years ago, Verdin, the 60-year-old from Pointe-Au-Chien, his father and a cousin took shotguns and stood in the way of a Louisiana Land and Exploration Co. marsh buggy crew digging a trench that was about to go through a nearby Indian burial ground.

"We said: If you go one more step, you'll risk your life," he recalled. "They didn't go through the burial ground. I can't think of one Indian who ever made any money from oil."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100518/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_native_americans;_ylt=AhoABDySOM 8fvoIz8t_1Nt6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTQ2OHNmZ2NnBGFzc2V0A2 FwLzIwMTAwNTE4L3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX25hdGl2ZV9h bWVyaWNhbnMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM1BHBvcw MyBHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARz bGsDc3BpbGxyZWluZm9y

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil spill to shut down 19 percent of Gulf fishing
28 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Federal officials say they're expanding the area of the Gulf of Mexico where fishing is shut down because of a massive oil spill.

They had already shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle soon after an offshore oil rig exploded and sank last month. About 7 percent of federal waters were affected.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday that it's expanding the closed area, though it won't say exactly where until later in the day. Nearly 46,000 square miles, or about 19 percent of federal waters, will be shut under the expanded ban.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco of NOAA says the government will be testing fish that is caught to make sure it's safe.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100518/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_commercial_fishing;_ylt=AiHXAAym REpEpQG9vuk2Uh.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoNXUwaDRoBHBvcwMy MwRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNvaWxzcG lsbHRvc2g-

[Jolie Rouge]

Interior secretary acknowledges lax oil regulation
By H. Josef Hebert And Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press Writers 21 mins ago

:doh:

WASHINGTON – Grilled by skeptical lawmakers, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday acknowledged his agency had been lax in overseeing offshore drilling activities and that may have contributed to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"There will be tremendous lessons to be learned here," Salazar told a Senate panel in his first appearance before Congress since the April 20 blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

His appearances before two of the three Senate panels holding hearings Tuesday on the giant oil spill came as the federal officials kept a wary eye on the expanding dimensions of the problem. The government increased the area of the Gulf where fishing is shut down to 46,000 square miles, or about 19 percent of federal waters. That's up from about 7 percent before.

Government scientists were anxiously surveying the Gulf to determine if the oil had entered a powerful current that could take it to Florida and eventually up the East Coast. Tar balls that washed up on Florida's Key West were shipped to a Coast Guard laboratory in Connecticut to determine if they came from the Gulf spill.

New underwater video released by BP PLC, the oil giant that owns a majority interest in the blown well, showed oil and gas erupting under pressure in large, dark clouds from its crippled blowout preventer safety device on the ocean floor. The leaks resembled a geyser on land. The five-minute clip apparently was recorded late Saturday and Sunday afternoon from aboard a remotely operated submarine.

Salazar, testifying before the Senate Energy and Resources Committee, promised an overhaul of federal regulations and said blame for the BP spill rests with both industry and the government, particularly his agency's Minerals Management Service.

"We need to clean up that house," Salazar said of the service. While most of the agency's 1,700 employees are reliable and trustworthy, he said, there were "a few bad apples."

President Barack Obama, who has decried the "cozy relationship" between government regulators and the energy industry, has proposed splitting the agency into two parts to separate regulatory duties from those who collect royalty fees from oil and gas companies.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the committee chairman, said the panel's mission was to decipher "the cascade of failures that caused the catastrophic blowout." In addition, he said, Congress needs to figure what must be done to make sure it never happens again.

While the cause of the accident at the well has yet to be pinpointed, information uncovered so far raises the question of where the Minerals Management Service was, Bingaman said.

"It is long past time to drain the safety and environmental swamp that is MMS," declared Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "This agency has been in denial about safety problems for years."

Wyden said it was time for the government to "play catch-up ball in a hurry."

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., pointed to an AP investigation's findings that the rig that exploded was allowed to operate "without safety documentation required by government regulations."

BP said Tuesday it was collecting about 84,000 gallons a day from a mile-long tube drawing oil from the blown-out well to a ship on the surface. But it cautioned that increasing the flow through the tube would be difficult.

"This remains a new technology and both its continued operation and its effectiveness in capturing the oil and gas remain uncertain," BP said in a statement.

Salazar denied reports that MMS had approved a number of new oil drilling applications in deep waters of the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill. He said no new deep water drilling has begun since April 20, and no wells will be drilled until a safety report is completed on the BP spill later this month.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told the committee that about a dozen applications were approved after April 20, but were suspended on May 6 before work began.

Obama plans to establish a presidential commission to look into the disaster, modeled on those for the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Salazar cautioned against overreaction, noting that the Gulf waters produce nearly a third of the nation's oil. He said the Challenger disaster delayed the space program for 2 1/2 years and Three Mile Island "shut down the nuclear industry for 30 years."

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, expressed hope "we don't pull back."

"The country made a very serious mistake following Three Mile Island by pulling back with respect to nuclear power," Bennett said.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said an executive order on the presidential commission would come out soon, possibly this week.

Burton was asked about increasingly sharp congressional rhetoric toward BP, given that the administration must work with BP in the cleanup.

"Well, our view is that we didn't choose any partner for this catastrophe," Burton said. "What we've done is worked with the responsible party to do everything we can to stop oil from leaking from the bottom of the Gulf and to mitigate the environmental disaster that we're seeing in the water right now."

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Tuesday that aerial surveys show some tendrils of light oil close to or already in the loop current, which circulates in the Gulf and takes water south to the Florida Keys and the Gulf Stream. But most oil is dozens of miles away from the current.

Lubchenco said it will take about eight to 10 days after oil enters the current before it begins to reach Florida.

However, researchers at the University of South Florida in Tampa suggested oil from the spill could reach the Florida keys as early as Sunday.

Meanwhile, federal officials said 189 dead sea turtles, birds and other animals have been found along Gulf coastlines since the oil spill started. Officials said they don't know how many were killed by oil or chemical dispersants. Barbara Schroeder of NOAA's fisheries program said necropsies have not detected oil in the bodies of the sea turtles.

Acting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Rowan Gould says the spill's effects could be felt for decades and may never be fully known because so many affected creatures live far offshore.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100518/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AgrBea7C.QeGK4lUVYf.pNys0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTFocmplZ3Y4BHBvcwMyNgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9 uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNpbnRlcmlvcnNlY3I-


http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/94148994.html

[SHELBYDOG]

Scientists worry current could carry oil to Keys
By Jeffrey Collins And Matt Sedensky, Associated Press Writers 15 mins ago

ROBERT, La. – With BP finally gaining some control over the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are increasingly worried that huge plumes of crude already spilled could get caught in a current that would carry the mess all the way to the Florida Keys and beyond, damaging coral reefs and killing wildlife.

Scientists said the oil will move into the so-called loop current soon if it hasn't already, though they could not say exactly when or how much there would be. Once it is in the loop, it could take 10 days or longer to reach the Keys.

"It's only a question of when," said Peter Ortner, a University of Miami oceanographer.

In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers, BP has struggled to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton box that got clogged with icy crystals. Over the weekend, the oil company finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon some of the gushing oil into a tanker, but millions of gallons are already in the Gulf.

The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Some scientists project the current will draw the crude through the Keys and then up Florida's Atlantic Coast, where the oil might avoid the beaches of Miami and Fort Lauderdale but could wash up around Palm Beach.

Many scientists expect the oil to get no farther north than Cape Canaveral, midway up the coast, before it is carried out to sea and becomes more and more diluted.

The pollution could endanger Florida's shoreline mangroves, seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the 221-mile-long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which helps draw millions of snorkelers, fishermen and other tourists whose dollars are vital to the state's economy.

Pollutants can smother and kill corals — living creatures that excrete a hard exterior skeleton — or can hinder their ability to reproduce and grow. That, in turn, could harm thousands of species of exotic and colorful fish and other marine life that live in and around reefs.

In other developments:

• Chris Oynes, who oversees offshore drilling programs at the federal Minerals Management Service, will retire at the end of the month, becoming the Interior Department's first casualty of the disaster. Oynes has been criticized as too cozy with the oil industry.

• The White House will establish a presidential commission to investigate the spill, according to an administration official speaking of condition of anonymity.

• California Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats are calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation.

• BP said it has spent $500 million on the spill so far.

• The oil company said it will never again try to produce oil from the well, though it did not rule out drilling elsewhere in the reservoir. "The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that's what we will do," said Doug Suttles, BP chief operating officer.

William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one computer model showed oil had already entered the loop current, while a second model showed the oil was three miles from it. Mike Sole, Florida's environmental protection secretary, said the edge could still be two to 18 miles away.

BP said it is having some success with a mile-long tube that is funneling a little more than 42,000 gallons of crude a day from the well into a tanker ship. That would be about a fifth of the 210,000 gallons the company estimated is gushing out each day, though scientists who have studied video of the leak say it could be much bigger.

Crews will slowly increase how much they are collecting over the next few days. They need to move slowly to prevent the formation of the ice-like crystals that doomed the effort to lower a big concrete-and-steel box over the blown-out well.

BP initially said it hoped the system would capture most of the leaking oil, but Suttles said Monday that officials would be pleased if the tube eventually sucks up half of it.

The siphoning is not a permanent solution. BP is preparing to shoot a mixture known as drilling mud into the well later this week in a procedure called a "top-kill" that would take several weeks but, if successful, would stop the flow altogether. Two relief wells are also being drilled to pump cement into the well to close it, but that will take months.

Chemicals being sprayed underwater are helping to disperse the oil and keep it from washing ashore in great quantities, but researchers said that in recent days they have discovered miles-long underwater plumes of oil that could poison or suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could last for a decade or more.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that the researchers' announcement of the oil plumes was premature and that further tests are needed to confirm that the plumes detected were indeed caused by the blowout.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AiZtbsGM40eSx9PzWhpSX4ys0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTNobW5ucm1uBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNTE4L3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb 3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9 yeQRzbGsDc2NpZW50aXN0c3dv

The tar balls that washed up in Key West was tested & they say aren't from BP's oil spill. I heard this on the morning news. So far so good, but that could all change any day....

[SHELBYDOG]

Heavy oil hits Louisiana shore


By Matthew Bigg Matthew Bigg – 2 hrs 28 mins ago
VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) – The first heavy oil from a giant Gulf of Mexico spill sloshed ashore in fragile Louisiana marshlands on Wednesday and part of the mess entered a powerful current that could carry it to Florida and beyond.

The developments underscored the gravity of the situation as British energy giant BP Plc raced to capture more crude gushing from a ruptured well a mile beneath the surface. The spill is threatening an ecological and economic disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast and beyond.

"This wasn't tar balls. This wasn't sheen," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said after a boat tour to the southernmost point of the Mississippi River estuary. "This is heavy oil in our wetlands."

The marshes are the nurseries for shrimp, oysters, crabs and fish that make Louisiana the leading producer of commercial seafood in the continental United States and a top destination for recreational anglers. The United States has already imposed a large no-fishing zone in waters in the Gulf seen affected by the spill.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's top weather forecaster said a "small portion" of light sheen from the giant oil slick has already entered the Loop Current, which could carry the oil down to the Florida Keys, to Cuba and even up the U.S. East Coast.

BP, its reputation on the line in an environmental disaster that could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, has marked some progress at siphoning some of the oil from the well, which ruptured after an April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers.

BP said it is now siphoning about 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons/477,000 liters) a day of oil, out of what the company estimated was a 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day gusher. And BP could begin injecting mud into the well as early as Sunday in a bid to permanently plug the leak.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100519/ts_nm/us_oil_rig_leak_185

[Jolie Rouge]

BP concedes Gulf oil spill is bigger than estimate
By Michael Kunzelman And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers 4 mins ago

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20100520/capt.photo_1274202280170-1-0.jpg?x=400&y=311&q=85&sig=pnpF28mVqvxKE7c20ITt3g--

A graphic showing how the Gulf current could spread the oil spill to the coast of Florida. Crude oil oozed into fragile US marshlands Thursday, as BP conceded for the first time that more fuel was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than previously estimated


NEW ORLEANS – BP conceded Thursday that more oil than it estimated is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico as heavy crude washed into Louisiana's wetlands for the first time, feeding worries and uncertainty about the massive monthlong spill.

Mark Proegler, a spokesman for oil giant BP PLC, told The Associated Press that a mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea — but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

Several professors who have watched video of the leak have said they believe the amount spewing out is much higher than official estimates.

Proegler said the 210,000 gallons — 5,000 barrels — has always been just an estimate because there is no way to measure how much is spilling from the seafloor.

"I would encourage people to take a look at the changing amount of oil coming from the ocean floor," said Steve Rinehart, another BP spokesman. "It's pretty clear that now that we're taking 5,000 barrels of oil a day, there's a significant change in the flow reaching the sea."

A live video feed of the leak posted online Thursday at the insistence of lawmakers shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing next to the tube that's carrying some of it to the surface. The House committee website where it was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

"What you see are real-time images of a real-world disaster unfolding 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf," said U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. "These videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of BP's inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States."

The well blew out after an explosion a month ago on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 people. At least 6 million gallons have spilled so far, making it the worst U.S. environmental disaster in decades. The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989.

Small amounts of light oil have washed up in delicate coastal areas of Louisiana over the past several weeks, but nothing like the brown ooze from the spill that started coating marsh grasses and hanging in the shallow water of a wetland Wednesday.

"This is the heavy oil that everyone's been fearing that is here now," Gov. Bobby Jindal said during a boat tour Wednesday in southeastern Louisiana. The wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi River are home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life.

A young brown pelican, one wing and its neck matted with oil, was found dead Thursday morning on a sand spit in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, a renowned bird sanctuary eight miles off Louisiana's coast that had so far been shielded from the worst of the spill. Scientists said it's likely oil killed it.

Much of southeast Louisiana's coastal waters have been closed to fishing and oyster harvesting because of the oil. A vast area stretching east toward Florida in federal waters also has been closed to seafood harvesting.

Officials in Florida sought to reassure tourists that the state's beaches are clean and safe as government scientists said a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast-moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast.

During a news conference, David Halstead, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, showed off a picture of a Coppertone bottle on a beach.

"What's the only oil on the beaches? Suntan oil," he said.

Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists, said Charlie Henry, a NOAA environmental scientist.

The loop moves based on shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. The slick itself has defied scientists' efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.

Florida's state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Florida Keys. U.S. officials were also talking to Cuba about how to respond to the spill should it reach the island's northern coast, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.

BP, which was leasing the rig when it exploded, was marshaling equipment and conducting tests Thursday ahead of a new effort to choke off the oil flow. Crews hoped that by Sunday they can start a procedure known as a "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the crippled equipment on top of the well, then permanently sealing it with cement.

The procedure has been used before to halt gushing oil above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring it has never been used 5,000 feet below the sea. That's why scientists and engineers have spent much of the past week preparing and taking a series of measurements to make sure the mission doesn't backfire.

"The philosophy from the beginning is not to take any action which could make the situation worse, and those are the final steps we're doing," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.

Anger over the spill has mounted as the efforts to stop the leak have dragged on. Greenpeace activists scaled BP's London headquarters Thursday to hang a flag accusing the oil company of polluting the environment. The group said the action was prompted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as well as a controversial project in Canada.

"It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower logo when your business is dirty oil," Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart said from a balcony above the headquarters' front door in a telephone interview.

BP spokesman Robert Wine called the action "a very calm and genteel protest," and said no employees had been prevented from getting to work.

___

Associated Press Writers Kelli Kennedy in Miami, Ben Evans in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York, Kevin McGill in Venice, La., Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

___

Online: http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100520/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AgvgczZd_dX3j_x0Jld.lP.p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

Kendrick Meek demands BP pay Florida more for tourism after oil spill

Rep. Kendrick Meek on Thursday demanded that oil giant BP give Florida more money to revive the state's $65 billion tourism industry. Speaking to reporters in a conference call, Meek, who is vying for the Democratic nomination in this year's contentious Senate race, said he sent a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward asking for an additional $75 million for a marketing campaign aimed at would-be visitors.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/20/1639088/kendrick-meek-demands-bp-pay-florida.html

[Jolie Rouge]

BP concedes Gulf oil spill is bigger than estimate
By Michael Kunzelman And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers 4 mins ago

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20100520/capt.photo_1274202280170-1-0.jpg?x=400&y=311&q=85&sig=pnpF28mVqvxKE7c20ITt3g--

A graphic showing how the Gulf current could spread the oil spill to the coast of Florida. Crude oil oozed into fragile US marshlands Thursday, as BP conceded for the first time that more fuel was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than previously estimated


NEW ORLEANS – BP conceded Thursday that more oil than it estimated is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico as heavy crude washed into Louisiana's wetlands for the first time, feeding worries and uncertainty about the massive monthlong spill.

Mark Proegler, a spokesman for oil giant BP PLC, told The Associated Press that a mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea — but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

Several professors who have watched video of the leak have said they believe the amount spewing out is much higher than official estimates.

Proegler said the 210,000 gallons — 5,000 barrels — has always been just an estimate because there is no way to measure how much is spilling from the seafloor.

"I would encourage people to take a look at the changing amount of oil coming from the ocean floor," said Steve Rinehart, another BP spokesman. "It's pretty clear that now that we're taking 5,000 barrels of oil a day, there's a significant change in the flow reaching the sea."

A live video feed of the leak posted online Thursday at the insistence of lawmakers shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing next to the tube that's carrying some of it to the surface. The House committee website where it was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

"What you see are real-time images of a real-world disaster unfolding 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf," said U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. "These videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of BP's inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States."

The well blew out after an explosion a month ago on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 people. At least 6 million gallons have spilled so far, making it the worst U.S. environmental disaster in decades. The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989.

Small amounts of light oil have washed up in delicate coastal areas of Louisiana over the past several weeks, but nothing like the brown ooze from the spill that started coating marsh grasses and hanging in the shallow water of a wetland Wednesday.

"This is the heavy oil that everyone's been fearing that is here now," Gov. Bobby Jindal said during a boat tour Wednesday in southeastern Louisiana. The wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi River are home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life.

A young brown pelican, one wing and its neck matted with oil, was found dead Thursday morning on a sand spit in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, a renowned bird sanctuary eight miles off Louisiana's coast that had so far been shielded from the worst of the spill. Scientists said it's likely oil killed it.

Much of southeast Louisiana's coastal waters have been closed to fishing and oyster harvesting because of the oil. A vast area stretching east toward Florida in federal waters also has been closed to seafood harvesting.

Officials in Florida sought to reassure tourists that the state's beaches are clean and safe as government scientists said a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast-moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast.

During a news conference, David Halstead, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, showed off a picture of a Coppertone bottle on a beach.

"What's the only oil on the beaches? Suntan oil," he said.

Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists, said Charlie Henry, a NOAA environmental scientist.

The loop moves based on shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. The slick itself has defied scientists' efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.

Florida's state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Florida Keys. U.S. officials were also talking to Cuba about how to respond to the spill should it reach the island's northern coast, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.

BP, which was leasing the rig when it exploded, was marshaling equipment and conducting tests Thursday ahead of a new effort to choke off the oil flow. Crews hoped that by Sunday they can start a procedure known as a "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the crippled equipment on top of the well, then permanently sealing it with cement.

The procedure has been used before to halt gushing oil above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring it has never been used 5,000 feet below the sea. That's why scientists and engineers have spent much of the past week preparing and taking a series of measurements to make sure the mission doesn't backfire.

"The philosophy from the beginning is not to take any action which could make the situation worse, and those are the final steps we're doing," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.

Anger over the spill has mounted as the efforts to stop the leak have dragged on. Greenpeace activists scaled BP's London headquarters Thursday to hang a flag accusing the oil company of polluting the environment. The group said the action was prompted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as well as a controversial project in Canada.

"It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower logo when your business is dirty oil," Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart said from a balcony above the headquarters' front door in a telephone interview.

BP spokesman Robert Wine called the action "a very calm and genteel protest," and said no employees had been prevented from getting to work.

___

Associated Press Writers Kelli Kennedy in Miami, Ben Evans in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York, Kevin McGill in Venice, La., Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

___

Online: http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100520/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AgvgczZd_dX3j_x0Jld.lP.p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

Kendrick Meek demands BP pay Florida more for tourism after oil spill

Rep. Kendrick Meek on Thursday demanded that oil giant BP give Florida more money to revive the state's $65 billion tourism industry. Speaking to reporters in a conference call, Meek, who is vying for the Democratic nomination in this year's contentious Senate race, said he sent a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward asking for an additional $75 million for a marketing campaign aimed at would-be visitors.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/20/1639088/kendrick-meek-demands-bp-pay-florida.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Syrupy oil washes into La. marshes for first time
By Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer 44 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – The spectacle many had feared for a month finally began unfolding as gooey, rust-colored oil washed into the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi for the first time, stoking public anger and frustration with both BP and the government.

The sense of gloom deepened as BP conceded what some scientists have been saying for weeks: that the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than the company previously estimated.

Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But on Wednesday, chocolate brown and vivid orange globs, sheets and ribbons of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint began coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana's wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

There were no immediate reports of any mass die-offs of wildlife or large numbers of creatures wriggling in oil, as seen after the Exxon Valdez disaster, but that was the fear.

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, toured the oil-fouled marshes Wednesday and said: "Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn't be here."

A live video feed of the underwater gusher, posted online Thursday after lawmakers exerted pressure on BP, is sure to fuel the anger.

It shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing into the water next to the stopper-and-tube combination that BP inserted to carry some of the crude to the surface. The House committee website where the video was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

"These videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of BP's inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

At least 6 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf — more than half the amount the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Alaska in 1989 — since the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded 50 miles off the coast April 20. Eleven workers were killed.

The slow-motion disaster could become far wider. Government scientists said a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast-moving water that could carry the mess into the Florida Keys and up the state's Atlantic Coast, damaging coral reefs and fouling beaches.

"It's anger that the people who are supposed to be driving the ship don't have any idea what's going on," E.J. Boles, a musician from Big Pine Key, Fla., said of both BP and the government. "Why wouldn't they have any contingency plan? I'm not a genius, and even I would have thought of that."

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told The Associated Press that the mile-long tube inserted into the leaking well pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons of oil a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard had estimated was gushing into the sea — but that some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said an interagency team using ships and planes is working on a new estimate of how much oil is gushing from the well. Agency officials would not speculate on how big the leak might be.

Washington, meanwhile, turned up the pressure on BP.

The Obama administration asked the company to be more open with the public by sharing such information as measurements of the leak and the trajectory of the spill. BP has been accused of covering up the magnitude of the disaster.

Also, the Environmental Protection Agency directed BP to employ a less toxic form of the chemical dispersants it has been using to break up the oil and keep it from reaching the surface.

BP is marshaling equipment for an attempt as early as Sunday at a "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the top of the blown-out well to try to plug the gusher. A top kill has been used before above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring, it has never been attempted 5,000 feet underwater.

If it doesn't work, the backup plans include a "junk shot" — shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other material into the well to clog it up.

But Chris Roberts, a member of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish Council, complained bitterly: "We don't have time for BP to use the Gulf of Mexico as an experiment."

BP officials have said repeatedly that no one could have predicted or prepared for such a disaster. But some lawmakers and others aren't buying it.

Commercial fisherman Pete Gerica of New Orleans, a member of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said the oil industry "needed to have a better tool box." As for the government, he said, "The watchdog people failed us miserably."

In Washington, environmental groups urged the government to take greater control of the situation from BP.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a crime scene," said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, "and the perpetrator cannot be left in charge of assessing the damage."

___

Associated Press writers Mike Kunzelman, Kevin McGill, Greg Bluestein and Janet McConnaughey in Louisiana, Ben Evans in Washington, Holbrook Mohr in Mississippi, and Tamara Lush and Matt Sedensky in Florida contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=Asf2WYjgWdtN_E2OvOPaoHWs0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTFoZnRkb3NkBHBvcwMyNgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9 uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNzeXJ1cHlvaWx3YXM-

[Jolie Rouge]

A month in, outrage over Gulf oil spill grows
Kevin Mcgill And Vicki Smith, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 5 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – Thick, sticky oil crept deeper into delicate marshes of the Mississippi Delta, an arrival dreaded for a month since the crude started spewing into the Gulf, as anger and frustration mounted over efforts to plug the gusher from a blown-out well and contain the spill.

Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But chocolate brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana's wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

A deep, stagnant ooze sat in the middle of a particularly devastated marsh off the Louisiana coast where Emily Guidry Schatzel of the National Wildlife Federation was examining stained reeds.

"This is just heartbreaking," she said with a sigh. "I can't believe it."

Ralph Morgenweck of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that countless animals could be feeling the effects of the spill, though workers have found only a handful hurt or injured.

BP PLC was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive spill. The company conceded Thursday what some scientists have been saying for weeks: More oil is flowing from the leak than BP and the Coast Guard had previously estimated.

"It's anger at the people who are supposed to be driving the ship don't have any idea what's going on," said E.J. Boles, 55, a musician from Big Pine Key, Fla. "Why wouldn't they have any contingency plan? I'm not a genius and even I would have thought of that."

The BP executive in charge of fighting the spill, Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, said he understands the public frustration. He told the CBS "Early Show" on Friday that in the worst case scenario, the gusher could continue until early August, when a new well being drilled to cap the flow permanently could be finished.

But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part because it is a large body of water and has withstood other oil spills.

"I'm optimistic, I'm very optimistic that the Gulf will fully recover," Suttles said on CBS.

A live video feed of the underwater gusher, posted online after lawmakers exerted pressure on BP, is sure to fuel the anger.

It shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing into the water next to the stopper-and-tube combination that BP inserted to carry some of the crude to the surface. The House committee website where the video was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

"BP has lost all credibility ... It's clear that they have been hiding the actual consequences of this spill," said U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

At least 6 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf since the explosion, more than half of what the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Alaska in 1989. A growing number of scientists believe it's more.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told The Associated Press that the mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons of oil a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea — but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

Washington, meanwhile, has turned up the pressure on BP.

The Obama administration asked the company to be more open with the public by sharing such information as measurements of the leak and the trajectory of the spill. BP has been accused of covering up the magnitude of the disaster.

Also, the Environmental Protection Agency directed BP to employ a less toxic form of the chemical dispersants it has been using to break up the oil and keep it from reaching the surface.

BP is marshaling equipment for an attempt as early as Sunday at a "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the top of the blown-out well to try to plug the gusher.

If it doesn't work, the backup plans include a "junk shot" — shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other material into the well to clog it up.

"We're now looking at a scenario where response plans include lighting the ocean on fire, pouring potent chemicals into the water, and using trash and human hair to stop the flow of oil," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, in a letter to President Barack Obama calling for a formal moratorium on new offshore drilling permits. "If this is the backup plan, we need to rethink taking the risk in the first place."

Patience was wearing thin among state and local officials who called on Obama to take a larger role in the fight against oil invading the Louisiana coast.

"We've given BP enough time," said Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young.

"Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after touring the clogged marshes. "Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn't be here, either."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print

[Jolie Rouge]

Toxic dispersant? Oil isn't BP's only problem


http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/19948445

[Jolie Rouge]

Public beach in La. closed as oil washes up
By Kevin Mcgill And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers 50 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – Officials closed the public beach here Friday as thick gobs of oil resembling melted chocolate washed up, a very visible reminder of the blown-out well that has been spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a month.

Up to now, only tar balls and a light sheen had come ashore. But oil was starting to hit the beach at this island resort community in various forms — light sheens, orange-colored splotches and heavier brown sheets — said Chris Roberts, a local official who surveyed the area Friday morning.

"It's difficult to clean up when you haven't stopped the source," said Roberts, a councilman for Jefferson Parish, which stretches from the New Orleans metropolitan area to the coast. "You can scrape it off the beach but it's coming right back."

BP PLC was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive spill. The company conceded Thursday what some scientists have been saying for weeks: More oil is flowing from the leak than BP and the Coast Guard had previously estimated.

There has been frustration with the pace of efforts to stop the oil, and BP said Friday that it will likely be at least Tuesday before crews can begin a process known as a "top kill" that would stop the flow by shooting heavy drilling mud into the well.

Brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have also begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana's wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

A deep, stagnant ooze sat in the middle of a particularly devastated marsh off the Louisiana coast where Emily Guidry Schatzel of the National Wildlife Federation was examining stained reeds.

"This is just heartbreaking," she said with a sigh. "I can't believe it."

Ralph Morgenweck of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said countless animals could be feeling the effects of the spill, though workers have found only a handful hurt or injured.

The BP executive in charge of fighting the spill, Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, said he understands the public is frustrated with the response. He told the CBS "Early Show" on Friday that in the worst case scenario, the gusher could continue until early August, when a new well being drilled to cap the flow permanently could be finished.

But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part because it is a large body of water and has withstood other oil spills.

"I'm optimistic, I'm very optimistic that the Gulf will fully recover," Suttles said on CBS.

A live video feed of the underwater gusher, posted online after lawmakers exerted pressure on BP, shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing into the water next to the stopper-and-tube combination that BP inserted to carry some of the crude to the surface. The House committee website where the video was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

At least 6 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf since the explosion, more than half of what the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Alaska in 1989. A growing number of scientists believe it's more.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told The Associated Press on Thursday that the mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend was at one point capturing 210,000 gallons of oil a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea — but some was still escaping. He would not say how much.

Suttles said Friday that the pipe is capturing an average of about 84,000 gallons a day, though the amount varies depending on what's happening on the seafloor.

Washington, meanwhile, has turned up the pressure on BP.

The Obama administration asked the company to be more open with the public by sharing such information as measurements of the leak and the trajectory of the spill. BP has been accused of covering up the magnitude of the disaster.

Also, the Environmental Protection Agency directed BP to employ a less toxic form of the chemical dispersants it has been using to break up the oil and keep it from reaching the surface.

BP is marshaling equipment to try the "top kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the top of the blown-out well to try to plug the gusher.

If it doesn't work, the backup plans include a "junk shot" — shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other material into the well to clog it up.

"We're now looking at a scenario where response plans include lighting the ocean on fire, pouring potent chemicals into the water, and using trash and human hair to stop the flow of oil," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, in a letter to President Barack Obama calling for a formal moratorium on new offshore drilling permits. "If this is the backup plan, we need to rethink taking the risk in the first place."

Patience was wearing thin among state and local officials who called on Obama to take a larger role in the fight against oil invading the Louisiana coast.

"We've given BP enough time," said Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Aq1Zkca1F_NcdOVT44rOPdWp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Month after oil spill, why is BP still in charge?
By Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer 18 mins ago


WASHINGTON – Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its "boot on the throat" of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill.

But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.

"I'm tired of being nice. I'm tired of working as a team," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.

"The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP's word," declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill's effect on the ecosystem.

That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.

In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.

"If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I'm frustrated, too," said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.

"Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can't do something about a very big problem," Allen told The Associated Press Friday.

Still, as simple as it may seem for the government to just take over, the law prevents it, Allen said.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies. Spills on land are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, offshore spills by the Coast Guard.

"The basic notion is you hold the responsible party accountable, with regime oversight" from the government, Allen said. "BP has not been relieved of that responsibility, nor have they been relieved for penalties or for oversight."

He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill — and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.

"There's nothing that we think can and should be done that isn't being done. Nothing," Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.

There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.

Asked if Obama had confidence in BP, Gibbs said only: "We are continuing to push BP to do everything that they can."

BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the federal government has been "an integral part of the response" to the oil spill since shortly after the April 20 explosion.

"There are many federal agencies here in the Unified Command, and they've been part of that within days of the incident," said Chapman, who works out of a joint response site in Louisiana, near the site of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Criticism of the cleanup response has spread beyond BP. On Friday, the Texas lab contracted to test samples of water contaminated by the spill defended itself against complaints that it has a conflict of interest because it does other work for BP.

TDI-Brooks International Inc., which points to its staffers' experience handling samples from the Exxon Valdez disaster, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped audit the lab and approved its methods.

"A typical state laboratory does not have this experience or capacity," TDI president James M. Brooks said.

The company's client list includes federal and state agencies along with dozens of oil companies, among them BP, a connection first reported by The New York Times. TDI-Brooks said about half of the lab's revenue comes from government work.

Test results on Deepwater Horizon samples will figure prominently in lawsuits and other judgments seeking to put a dollar value on the damage caused by the spill.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, who traveled to the Gulf the day after the explosion and has coordinated Interior's response to the spill, rejected the notion that BP is telling the federal government what to do.

"They are lashed in," Hayes said of BP. "They need approval for everything they do."

If BP is lashed to the government, the tether goes both ways. A large part of what the government knows about the oil spill comes from BP.

The oil company helps staff the command center in Robert, La., which publishes daily reports on efforts to contain, disperse and skim oil.

Some of the information flowing into the command center comes from undersea robots run by BP or ships ultimately being paid by BP. When the center reported Friday that nearly 9 million gallons of an oil-water mixture had been skimmed from the ocean surface, those statistics came from barges and other vessels funded by BP.

Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill — 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access.

"This is really closer to Apollo 13 than Exxon Valdez," he said referring to a near-disastrous Moon mission 40 years ago.

"Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector," Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP.

Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said. Most recently, it responded to an EPA directive to find a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the oil underwater.

In two instances — finding samples from the bottom of the ocean to test dispersants and distributing booms to block the oil — BP did not respond as quickly as officials had hoped, Allen said. In both cases they ultimately complied.

"Personally, whenever I have problem I call (BP CEO) Tony Hayward" on his cell phone, Allen said.

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[Jolie Rouge]

At worst, oil spewed already could fill 102 gyms
By Seth Borenstein And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers Fri May 21, 6:22 pm ET

COVINGTON, La. – Day by day, the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is adding up to mind-boggling numbers.

Using worst case scenarios calculated by scientists, a month's worth of leaking oil could fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles. That's more than the distance from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. That's just shy of 130 million gallons.

If the government's best case scenario is used — and only 5.25 million gallons have spilled — those milk jugs would cover a bit more than a roundtrip between New York and Washington. But the government is revising that number, with a team of scientists working around the clock to come up with a more realistic and likely higher figure.

Here's another way to think of just how much oil has gushed out since April 20: At worst, it's enough to fill 102 school gymnasiums to the ceiling with oil.

That's nothing compared to the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, where there are 643 quadrillion gallons. Even under the worst case scenario, the Gulf has five billion drops of water for every drop of oil. And the mighty Mississippi River pours 3.3 million gallons of new water into Gulf every second.

Under the rosiest scenario, little more than four gyms would be filled. That's how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration visualizes oil spill volumes on one of its websites.

At worst, the amount of oil that has already spilled is a dozen times more than the Exxon Valdez disaster. At best, it's only half as bad. Realistically, it's probably somewhere in that huge middle in between.

No matter what, it already is way too much oil for the delicate parts of the Gulf ecosystem, said Darryl Felder, a biologist at the University of Louisiana Lafayette.

"A lot of this is diffused now in deep layers," said Felder, who is coordinating a seven-volume scientific encyclopedia on the Gulf. "It's like it's under the rug. You can't see it on the surface, so it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. But it's not out of mind to most of the biologists who are concerned about its long-term effects."

There are many uncertainties about how much has spilled. It's not even clear if the leak began on April 20, when the rig exploded, or April 22 when the rig sank, or on April 24 when the Coast Guard first noticed two leaks.

Originally, BP and the federal government said 42,000 gallons were flowing per day. Then the number was upped to 210,000 and that's been the best case scenario, with calculations that the spill didn't start until April 24.

The best case scenario seems increasingly unlikely. On Thursday, BP acknowledged more oil than that is pouring into the Gulf. The company said its makeshift tube put in place to suck up the leak is siphoning 210,000 gallons a day into a barge — the full amount of oil the company said was leaking. Yet, there's still lots of oil flowing out into the Gulf that can now be seen live on a webcam.

"Anyone can look at that and determine that even though it can't be metered or measured, it's significantly less than it was," said company spokesman Steve Rinehart. "That suggests pretty clearly that taking 5,000 barrels a day (210,000 gallons) out of that stream puts a real dent in it."

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Friday the tube is now sucking about 92,400 gallons of oil a day to the surface. It was much less than the figure the company used several times a day earlier, but Suttles said the higher number is the most the tube had been sucking up at any one time, while the lower number is the average over 24 hours.

Federal officials acknowledge their 210,000 gallons-a-day figure for the total amount spilling needs to be revised. NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said the old estimate was based on a long-held international scientific formula based on surface slick observations. But the way this oil slick changed makes that calculation no longer useful, she said.

The worst-case scenario is based on the upper end of broad estimates from several scientists for the daily flow rate of the leak based on video observation — somewhere between 840,000 gallons a day and 4.2 million gallons a day.

New live video of the oil spill — along with criticism from BP — had scientists altering those estimates in both directions.

Tim Crone of Columbia University said that he was "really saddened" when he looked at the new video. He said he had hoped his estimate of 840,000 to 4.2 million gallons a day was wrong, but the video showed it wasn't. Crone upped his lower estimate to 1.68 million gallons and is sticking with his higher estimate for the main oil leak.

But Purdue University professor Steve Wereley said he will likely cut his estimate of 3.9 million gallons a day after BP said about half of what is flowing out of the pipe is gas, not oil. His estimate has a 20 percent margin of error and includes about 1 million gallons coming from a leak at the blowout preventer, away from the main leak.

Some experts say the 4.2 million gallon rate is probably way too high, just like the government figures are way too low. That's because somewhere around 1.2 million to 1.6 million gallons a day is all that can realistically be expected from that type of well if it were working right, they said.

Ian McDonald, a Florida State University oceanographer and expert tracking the spill, said both estimates were wrong, but the government figure is especially wrong.

"We don't know how bad this is," McDonald said Thursday. "One of the problems is it's going to be very hard to know."

McDonald said the spill's surface slick is now more than 14,600 square miles, larger than the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 30 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.

Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.

But they warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.

More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after BP's Deepwater Horizon burned and sank last month. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida. Louisiana is expected to be hit hardest.

"Oil in the marshes is the worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill.

Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands now coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane — the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.

In some eddies and protected inlets, the ochre-colored crude has pooled beneath the water's surface, forming clumps several inches deep.

With the seafloor leak still gushing hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, the damage is only getting worse. Millions of gallons already have leaked so far.

Coast Guard officials said Saturday the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months — even years — it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate.

Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound — used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.

Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances. "Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.

Marshes offer a vital line of defense against Gulf storms, blunting their fury before they hit populated areas. Louisiana and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions rebuilding barriers that were wiped out by hurricanes, notably Katrina in 2005.

They also act as nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, oysters — the backbone of the region's fishing industry. Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds nest in the wetlands' inner reaches, a complex network of bayous, bays and man-made canals.

To keep oil from pushing deep into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.

That plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If large volumes of oil make it through passes, the cleanup will become far more difficult as oil spreads into the bayous and canals.

Smaller spills have been occurring in the marshes for decades. In the past, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill, said Andy Nyman with Louisiana State University.

But with the plants gone, water from the gulf would roll in and wash away the roots, turning wetlands to open water.

Adm. Allen said that where conditions are right, an "in-situ burn" could be used to set oil-coated plants ablaze.

Nyman and other experts, though, warn it's trickier than simply lighting a fire. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.

Representatives from BP PLC — which leased the sunken rig and is responsible for the cleanup — said Saturday that cleanup crews have started more direct cleanup methods along Pass a Loutre in Plaquemines Parish. Shallow water skimmers were attempting to remove the oil from the top of the marsh.

Streams of water could later be used in a bid to wash oil from between cane stalks.

In other cases, the company will rely on "bioremediation" — letting oil-eating microbes do the work. "Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.

But White, the Loyola scientist, predicted at least short-term ruin for some of the wetlands he's been studying for three decades. Under a worst-case scenario, he said the damage could exceed the 217 square miles of wetlands lost during the 2005 hurricane season. "When I say that my stomach turns," he said.

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Some oil spill events from Saturday, May 22, 2010
By The Associated Press 15 mins ago

A summary of events on Saturday, May 22, Day 31 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well at a rate of at least 210,000 gallons per day.

HOW MUCH?

BP has conceded that more oil is leaking than its initial estimate of 210,000 gallons a day total, and a government team is working to get a handle on exactly how much is flowing. Even under the most conservative estimate, about 6 million gallons have leaked so far, more than half the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

WHERE TO?

Coast Guard officials said Saturday the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

IMPOSSIBLE CLEANUP

The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said. Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil. But they warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many affected areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.

POLITICS

The month-old oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has unleashed a gusher of congressional hearings that may prove nearly as hard to cap as the blown BP well. In an election year rife with political posturing, the spill from the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig is proving an easy target for lawmakers, whose fears of being swept out of office by an anti-incumbent wave were reinforced by Tuesday's batch of primaries. The blowout and the ensuing giant oil leak gave rise to 10 congressional hearings over the past two weeks. Five more are scheduled for this coming week, and at least five more are on tap in June. President Barack Obama is naming a special independent commission to review the accident.

SPILL COMMISSION

The White House has tapped former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and ex-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly to lead a presidential commission investigating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The White House was expected to make the announcement Saturday. The choices were confirmed ahead of time by two people familiar with the decision who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement. Graham is a Democrat and Reilly served in a Republican administration, a bipartisan model similar to other high-level investigative panels. The White House has said it was modeling the commission on panels that investigated the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster and the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.

FLORIDA KEYS

A powerful current forecast to bring oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill to the Florida Keys has shifted, though fears remain that the slick will inevitably hit the state. At a public meeting Saturday, officials tried to allay residents' fears, saying the so-called "loop current" expected to send the oil to Florida had moved west. That could delay the arrival of tar balls and other forms of oil to the Keys. The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Like the oil, the loop's position is constantly changing based on winds and currents, meaning predictions on its trajectory are also ever-fluctuating. Capt. Pat DeQuattro, commander of the Coast Guard station in Key West, said NOAA projections do not forecast the oil arriving in the Keys before Monday.

TOP KILL

BP now says it will likely be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot heavy mud into then blown-out well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Three ultra-deepwater rigs and other equipment are at the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded. They're preparing for a delicate procedure called a "top kill" that BP hopes will stop the flow of oil from the well.



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[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf spill: What oil habits will you change?
By Mary Richert Fri May 21, 10:39 am ET

Annapolis, Md. – For those of us from Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is not really a spill. It’s a gusher.

It is a deep wound in the minds, hearts, and yes, the pockets of anyone whose life has been enriched by the beauties of the Gulf Coast. The wildlife, the natural waterways, and yes, even the alligators: all those things we love are under dire threat.

The view from LouisianaMy home town is Sulphur, La., a relatively small place with a powerhouse football team and a heavily oil-dependent economy. My father, uncles, grandfather, and some cousins have all put in time working the oil fields of rural Louisiana, the rigs along the coast, or the refineries that dot our cities.

It’s fully understandable, then, that weaning ourselves from oil dependence has never been a popular proposition in Louisiana.

In fact, environmental awareness in the state has been embarrassingly bad. When I was in elementary school, teachers taught us “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” but there were no recycling facilities in town. I once encouraged a woman in Louisiana to buy a hybrid vehicle, and she stared blankly at me as though I’d suggested she should eat cardboard for dinner.

But the BP oil calamity is changing that.

The people of Louisiana and oil-dependent communities throughout the country are waking up to the realities of this dependence.

Every time I call my dad, he is angrier about the damage being done to his home. Meanwhile, his barber is angry because he thinks the media is making too much of the oil spill and hurting Louisiana’s reputation.

As a community, our journey has only begun. We’ve all known for years that we need to reduce our oil dependence, and we’ve known how much damage an oil spill could do, but we’ve hidden behind a deceptively comforting mantra: It won’t happen to me.

Well, now it has happened to me. It’s happened to all of us, and we can’t afford to make excuses any longer. We must take every step we can – small or large – to reduce our oil consumption and reduce our dependence on oil both foreign and local.

Those of us who grew up in the Gulf should now lead the way, because we’re seeing firsthand the toll this oil gusher is taking on our land and sea.

Growing up, my family often went fishing in the Gulf. We would sometimes tie our boat to a leg of an oil rig to keep us from drifting off.

At the end of the day, a pod of dolphins sometimes joined us on our way back to shore. They’d swim alongside us, eager for a snack. Now, like everything else that makes its home in the Gulf, they are threatened by this ongoing manmade disaster.

Location of oil rigsMany Gulf oil rigs are just a few miles from shore. If any of these rigs sprung a leak, it wouldn’t take long for the land to be destroyed.

By comparison, the Deepwater Horizon rig is 50 miles from shore and on the eastern side of the state. The oil has been drifting away from Sulphur and toward Florida instead, and for that my family feels dubiously lucky. It’s like feeling grateful when a hurricane turns the other way or when the flood waters rise in someone else’s neighborhood.

We can usually call it a natural disaster, say prayers, and collect canned food to donate to those whose homes were destroyed.

But a broken oil rig pumping crude into the ocean is the result of human hands, not nature’s fury, and no reasonable nature lover could be happy to see the oil wash up on their neighbor’s shores. I know what my family would have lost if a different rig had gone down, and my heart aches for the losses of the communities closest to the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Consumers can take actionNow it’s time to turn that ache into action. We live in a consumer culture where, theoretically, buyers have all the power. It’s time to test that theory by switching to sustainable products and using our dollars to demand and support the development of better petroleum alternatives.

When I heard the news about the oil spill, I swore to quit using oil immediately and permanently, but I was in the middle of my drive home from work and quickly realized how difficult it would be to cut petroleum from my life. Difficult, however, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

That realization prompted me to commit to reducing my petrol use one day and one purchase at a time. True to my generation, I’m doing it on a blog. I’ll be making efforts to drive less, consume less energy, use fewer plastics, and learn about alternative fuels.

Every purchase I make is a miniscule step, but I hope by putting my journey in the public view I can help inform others and encourage them to create change.

Mary Richert is a Louisiana native currently living in Maryland. She blogs at Not An Activist and contributes regularly to The Nervous Breakdown. She has also contributed to The Guardian’s Comment is Free, and Brevity. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College.

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[Jolie Rouge]

At worst, oil spewed already could fill 102 gyms
By Seth Borenstein And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers Fri May 21, 6:22 pm ET

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Satellite image provided by NASA
A May 17, 2010 satellite image provided by NASA shows a large patch of oil visible near the site of the Deepwater oil spill, and a long ribbon of oil stretched far to the southeast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast

COVINGTON, La. – Day by day, the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is adding up to mind-boggling numbers.

Using worst case scenarios calculated by scientists, a month's worth of leaking oil could fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles. That's more than the distance from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. That's just shy of 130 million gallons.

If the government's best case scenario is used — and only 5.25 million gallons have spilled — those milk jugs would cover a bit more than a roundtrip between New York and Washington. But the government is revising that number, with a team of scientists working around the clock to come up with a more realistic and likely higher figure.

Here's another way to think of just how much oil has gushed out since April 20: At worst, it's enough to fill 102 school gymnasiums to the ceiling with oil.

That's nothing compared to the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, where there are 643 quadrillion gallons. Even under the worst case scenario, the Gulf has five billion drops of water for every drop of oil. And the mighty Mississippi River pours 3.3 million gallons of new water into Gulf every second.

Under the rosiest scenario, little more than four gyms would be filled. That's how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration visualizes oil spill volumes on one of its websites.

At worst, the amount of oil that has already spilled is a dozen times more than the Exxon Valdez disaster. At best, it's only half as bad. Realistically, it's probably somewhere in that huge middle in between.

No matter what, it already is way too much oil for the delicate parts of the Gulf ecosystem, said Darryl Felder, a biologist at the University of Louisiana Lafayette.

"A lot of this is diffused now in deep layers," said Felder, who is coordinating a seven-volume scientific encyclopedia on the Gulf. "It's like it's under the rug. You can't see it on the surface, so it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. But it's not out of mind to most of the biologists who are concerned about its long-term effects."

There are many uncertainties about how much has spilled. It's not even clear if the leak began on April 20, when the rig exploded, or April 22 when the rig sank, or on April 24 when the Coast Guard first noticed two leaks.

Originally, BP and the federal government said 42,000 gallons were flowing per day. Then the number was upped to 210,000 and that's been the best case scenario, with calculations that the spill didn't start until April 24.

The best case scenario seems increasingly unlikely. On Thursday, BP acknowledged more oil than that is pouring into the Gulf. The company said its makeshift tube put in place to suck up the leak is siphoning 210,000 gallons a day into a barge — the full amount of oil the company said was leaking. Yet, there's still lots of oil flowing out into the Gulf that can now be seen live on a webcam.

"Anyone can look at that and determine that even though it can't be metered or measured, it's significantly less than it was," said company spokesman Steve Rinehart. "That suggests pretty clearly that taking 5,000 barrels a day (210,000 gallons) out of that stream puts a real dent in it."

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Friday the tube is now sucking about 92,400 gallons of oil a day to the surface. It was much less than the figure the company used several times a day earlier, but Suttles said the higher number is the most the tube had been sucking up at any one time, while the lower number is the average over 24 hours.

Federal officials acknowledge their 210,000 gallons-a-day figure for the total amount spilling needs to be revised. NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said the old estimate was based on a long-held international scientific formula based on surface slick observations. But the way this oil slick changed makes that calculation no longer useful, she said.

The worst-case scenario is based on the upper end of broad estimates from several scientists for the daily flow rate of the leak based on video observation — somewhere between 840,000 gallons a day and 4.2 million gallons a day.

New live video of the oil spill — along with criticism from BP — had scientists altering those estimates in both directions.

Tim Crone of Columbia University said that he was "really saddened" when he looked at the new video. He said he had hoped his estimate of 840,000 to 4.2 million gallons a day was wrong, but the video showed it wasn't. Crone upped his lower estimate to 1.68 million gallons and is sticking with his higher estimate for the main oil leak.

But Purdue University professor Steve Wereley said he will likely cut his estimate of 3.9 million gallons a day after BP said about half of what is flowing out of the pipe is gas, not oil. His estimate has a 20 percent margin of error and includes about 1 million gallons coming from a leak at the blowout preventer, away from the main leak.

Some experts say the 4.2 million gallon rate is probably way too high, just like the government figures are way too low. That's because somewhere around 1.2 million to 1.6 million gallons a day is all that can realistically be expected from that type of well if it were working right, they said.

Ian McDonald, a Florida State University oceanographer and expert tracking the spill, said both estimates were wrong, but the government figure is especially wrong.

"We don't know how bad this is," McDonald said Thursday. "One of the problems is it's going to be very hard to know."

McDonald said the spill's surface slick is now more than 14,600 square miles, larger than the states of Maryland and Delaware combined.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil soaks coastal marshes, birds as spill grows
By Greg Bluestein And Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 56 mins ago

BARATARIA BAY, La. – As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn't fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.

Several pelicans were coated in oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown and white feathers now jet black. Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.

It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned, or if the birds can be saved. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.

"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.

A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won't be put into action until at least Tuesday.

With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Jindal said the state has begun work on chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.

Jindal, who visited one of the affected nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags and sand hauled in; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.

At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.

Obama administration officials continued defending their response while criticizing that of BP PLC, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said. But federal officials have acknowledged that BP has expertise that they lack in stopping the deep-water leak.

In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way a good 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.

The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening themselves. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping — so encrusted in oil it couldn't fly.

Wildlife officials tried to rescue oil-soaked pelicans Sunday, but they suspended their efforts after spooking the birds. They weren't sure whether they would try again. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.

Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they're soaked in oil.

Globs of oil have soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.

"The question is, will it do more damage because this island is covered with the mess?" Nungesser said.

Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil — like burning or flooding the marshes — but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.

Plants and pelican eggs could wind up trampled to death by well-meaning humans. If the marshes are too dry, setting them ablaze could burn plants to the roots and obliterate the wetlands.

Flooding might help by floating out the oil, but it also could wash away the natural barriers to flooding from hurricanes and other disasters — much like hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away marshlands in 2005. State and federal officials spent millions rebuilding the much-needed buffer against tropical storms.

The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.

"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."

Each day the spill grows, so does anger with the government and BP. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.

The leak may not be completely stopped until a relief well is dug, a project that could take months. Another effort that BP said will begin Tuesday at the earliest will shoot heavy mud, and then cement, into the blown well, but that method has never been attempted before in mile-deep water and engineers are not sure it will work.

The only thing that has kept leaking oil out of the Gulf so far is the mile-long tube siphoning oil from the well to a ship. BP spokesman John Curry told The Associated Press on Sunday that it siphoned some 57,120 gallons of oil within the past 24 hours, a sharp drop from the 92,400 gallons of oil a day that the device was sucking up on Friday.

The amount BP has collected in the mile-long tube has varied since it was installed last week. The device was siphoning 42,000 gallons of oil a day early that week, but at times Thursday, the siphon was collecting oil at a rate of as much as 210,000 gallons a day.

BP refused to provide day-by-day figures on how much oil the tube was diverting. Curry said the rate is expected to vary widely, in part because it is not just oil but also natural gas that is leaking. On Sunday, for instance, the siphon collected more than 7 million cubic feet of gas.

The head of the Senate's environmental committee, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has asked the Justice Department to determine whether BP made false and misleading claims about its ability to prevent a serious oil spill.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that Justice Department officials have been to the region gathering information about the spill. However, he wouldn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation.

President Barack Obama has named a special independent commission to review what happened. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers; the rig sank two days later.

The 6 million-gallon figure for the spill is based on an initial BP estimate that about 210,000 gallons were spilling out each day. It became obvious the company had been underestimating the leak Thursday, when it started siphoning the oil at a 210,000-gallon-a-day rate while more crude spilled into the water.

___

Greg Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Mary Foster in in Barataria Bay, Matthew Daly in Washington, Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert in Louisiana contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100524/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Aq1Zkca1F_NcdOVT44rOPdWp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Cleaning oil-soaked wetlands may be impossible
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer Sat May 22, 8:28 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said.

Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil.

They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good. The only viable option for many impacted areas is to do nothing and let nature break down the spill.

More than 50 miles of Louisiana's delicate shoreline already have been soiled by the massive slick unleashed after the Deepwater Horizon rig burned and sank last month. Officials fear oil eventually could invade wetlands and beaches from Texas to Florida. Louisiana is expected to be hit hardest.

On Saturday, a major pelican rookery was awash in oil off Louisiana's coast. Hundreds of birds nest on the island, and an Associated Press photographer saw some birds and their eggs stained with the ooze. Nests were perched in mangroves directly above patches of crude.

Plaquemines Parish workers put booms around the island, but puddles of oil were inside the barrier.

"Oil in the marshes is the worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the federal effort to contain and clean up the spill.

Also Saturday, BP told federal regulators it plans to continue using a contentious chemical dispersant, despite orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to look for less toxic alternatives. BP said in a letter to the EPA that Corexit 9500 "remains the best option for subsea application."

The EPA didn't immediately comment on BP's decision.

Oil that has rolled into shoreline wetlands coats the stalks and leaves of plants such as roseau cane — the fabric that holds together an ecosystem that is essential to the region's fishing industry and a much-needed buffer against Gulf hurricanes. Soon, oil will smother those plants and choke off their supply of air and nutrients.

In some eddies and protected inlets, the ochre-colored crude has pooled beneath the water's surface, forming clumps several inches deep.

With the seafloor leak still gushing at least hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, the damage is only getting worse. Millions of gallons already have leaked so far.

Coast Guard officials said the spill's impact now stretches across a 150-mile swath, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

Over time, experts say weather and natural microbes will break down most of the oil. However, the crude will surely poison plants and wildlife in the months — even years — it will take for the syrupy muck to dissipate.

Back in 1989, crews fighting the Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which unleashed almost 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound — used pressure hoses and rakes to clean the shores. The Gulf Coast is just too fragile for that: those tactics could blast apart the peat-like soils that hold the marshes together.

Hundreds of miles of bayous and man-made canals crisscross the coast's exterior, offering numerous entry points for the crude. Access is difficult and time-intensive, even in the best of circumstances.

"Just the compaction of humanity bringing equipment in, walking on them, will kill them," said David White, a wetlands ecologist from Loyola University in New Orleans.

Marshes offer a vital line of defense against Gulf storms, blunting their fury before they hit populated areas. Louisiana and the federal government have spent hundreds of millions of dollars rebuilding barriers that were wiped out by hurricanes, notably Katrina in 2005.

They also act as nursery grounds for shrimp, crabs, oysters — the backbone of the region's fishing industry. Hundreds of thousands of migratory birds nest in the wetlands' inner reaches, a complex network of bayous, bays and man-made canals.

To keep oil from pushing deep into Louisiana's marshes, Gov. Bobby Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes want permission to erect a $350 million network of sand berms linking the state's barrier islands and headlands.

That plan is awaiting approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

After surveying oil-stricken areas Saturday, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said the berms were the marshes' last hope.

"It's getting in between all the cane and it's working through from one bayou to the next," he said.

Smaller spills have been occurring in the marshes for decades. In the past, cleanup crews would sometimes slice out oiled vegetation and take it to a landfill, said Andy Nyman with Louisiana State University.

But with the plants gone, water from the gulf would roll in and wash away the roots, turning wetlands to open water.

Adm. Allen said that where conditions are right, crews could set fire to oil-coated plants.

Nyman and other experts, though, warn it's tricky. If the marsh is too wet, the oil won't burn. Too dry, the roots burn and the marsh can be ruined.

BP PLC — which leased the sunken rig and is responsible for the cleanup — said Saturday that cleanup crews have started more direct cleanup methods along Pass a Loutre in Plaquemines Parish. Shallow water skimmers were attempting to remove the oil from the top of the marsh.

Streams of water could later be used in a bid to wash oil from between cane stalks.

In other cases, the company will rely on "bioremediation" — letting oil-eating microbes do the work.

"Nature has a way of helping the situation," said BP spokesman John Curry.

But Nyman said the dispersants could slow the microbes from breaking down the oil.

White, the Loyola scientist, predicted at least short-term ruin for some of the wetlands he's been studying for three decades. Under a worst-case scenario, he said the damage could exceed the 217 square miles of wetlands lost during the 2005 hurricane season.

"When I say that my stomach turns," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100523/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_impossible_cleanup/print;_ylt=A2KIKvdOAfpLKWcAVw.p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Palin accuses Obama of being in bed with Big Oil
by Andrew Gully 2 hrs 13 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Right-wing darling Sarah Palin accused US President Barack Obama on Sunday of being lax in his response to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and suggested this was because he is too close to Big Oil.

The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor, who champions off-shore drilling, criticized the media for not drawing the link between Obama and Big Oil and said if this spill had happened under former Republican president George W. Bush the scrutiny would have been far tougher.

"I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to president Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration," she told Fox News Sunday.

More than 3.5 million dollars has been given to candidates by BP over the last 20 years, with the largest single donation, 77,051 dollars, going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Palin suggested this close relationship explained why Obama was, "taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico."

The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, and sank two days later. Ever since, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil, perhaps even millions, have been spewing each day into the sea.

The resulting slick, now the size of a small country, threatens to leave Louisiana's fishing and coastal tourism industries in tatters, ruin pristine nature reserves, and cause decades of harm to the ecology of fragile marshes that are a haven for rare wildlife and migratory birds.

The Obama administration has been forced to defend its response to the disaster as some Republicans have sought to portray it as its Katrina, an allusion to president Bush's mishandling of the response to the hurricane that devastated Louisiana in 2005.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs mocked Palin's suggestions that Obama was somehow in bed with the big oil companies because of 2008 presidential campaign contributions.

"Sarah Palin was involved in that election, but I don't think, apparently, was paying a whole lot of attention," Gibbs said on CBS's "Face the Nation" program.

"I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration a huge ally. We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge for gasoline.

"My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country."

Earlier this month, Obama ratcheted up criticism of BP over the spills, betraying frustration with the company's failure to stop the leak, and more recently announced a bipartisan presidential commission to probe the huge oil spill.

Obama has also accused oil companies of enjoying a "cozy relationship" with the federal agency set up to monitor the energy sector which was later broken up into three separate agencies.

He ordered "top to bottom" reform of the agency after it was accused of allowing BP and other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first obtaining required permits.

"BP will pay for every bit of this," Gibbs said Sunday. "We have to figure out and make sure that the relationship that is had with government and oil companies is not a cozy relationship as the president said."

He also dismissed analogies with Katrina, which still haunts US politics and provides an easy comparison for the media when considering the longer-term fallout that may plague Obama's energy agenda for months or even years.

"If you look back at what happened in Katrina, the government wasn't there to respond to what was happening," said Gibbs. "That quite frankly was the problem.

"I think the difference in this case is we were there immediately. We have been there ever since."

Palin, who quit the Alaska governorship after serving less than half of one term, famously promoted the slogan "Drill, baby, drill!" that rallied supporters while dismissing possible environmental impact of off-shore drilling.

Her detractors switched the line to "Spill, baby, spill!"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/usoilpollutionenvironmentpalinobama/print;_ylt=A2KIKugNAvpLnkMB9QPZa7gF;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

comments

The author of this article does an awful job of hiding his biases against Sarah Palin. I was under the impression that Yahoo News was an objective site, however the tone of this article reveals the personal opinions of the author, despite whatever intentions he made to hide them.

In the very first sentence, Gully refers to Palin as "right-wing darling Sarah Palin", in what looks to be an effort to de-legitimize her. He could have referred to her as "former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin" or "former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin."

The article then states that Palin, "who supports offshore drilling" criticized Obama......Here the author clearly inserts Palin's support for offshore drilling in an effort to point out what he feels is an inconsistency with her accusations against Obama being in bed with Big Oil.

Finally the article awfully concludes the article with the fact that her detractors chant "spill baby spill." While the opinions of her detractors is certainly relevant for this article, to conclude the entire article with it is such a blatant display of bias because it has nothing to do with the main gist of the article, which is her comments about President Obama.

And these are just three examples in an article full of bias. In writing this article, Mr. Gully has shown no journalistic integrity, whatsoever. If he wants to write an opinion piece about his disagreements with Ms. Palin, I would have no problem. But inserting his biases against Ms. Palin under the premise of objective reporting is truly both deceiving and wrong.

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While it is true; such a tragedy has occurred, Palin has the least to say about it without sounding like a political wanna-be trying to catch the limelight again. True, this has taken way too long to not have been handled yet, when they should have plugged that thing up from the get go,I feel BP was trying to too hard to find a way to keep at the oil instead of plugging that freakin hole up from 1st hour...

[Jolie Rouge]

Feds: Government can't push BP aside on oil spill
By Greg Bluestein And Erica Werner, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 49 mins ago

COVINGTON, La. – The Obama administration's point man on the oil spill rejected the notion of removing BP and taking over the crisis Monday, saying the government has neither the company's expertise nor its deep-sea equipment.

"To push BP out of the way would raise a question, to replace them with what?" Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen, who is heading the federal response to the spill, said at a White House briefing.


The White House is facing increasing questions about why the government can't assert more control over the handling of the catastrophe, which unfolded after a BP offshore drilling rig blew up April 20.

All of BP's attempts to stop the leak have failed, despite the oil giant's use of joystick-operated submarine robots that can operate at depths no human could withstand. Millions of gallons of brown crude are now coating birds and other wildlife and fouling the Louisiana marshes.

BP is pinning its hopes of stopping the gusher on yet another technique never tested 5,000 feet underwater: a "top kill," in which heavy mud and cement would be shot into the blown-out well to plug it up. The top kill could begin as early as Wednesday, with BP CEO Tony Hayward giving it a 60 to 70 percent chance of success.

Allen said federal law dictated that BP had to operate the cleanup, with the government overseeing its efforts. "They're exhausting every technical means possible to deal with that leak," he said. "I am satisfied with the coordination that's going on."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar suggested over the weekend that the government could intervene aggressively if BP wasn't delivering. "If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," he said.

But asked about that comment Monday, Allen said: "That's more of a metaphor."

Allen said BP and the government are working closely together, with the government holding veto power and adopting an "inquisitorial" stand toward the company's ideas. The commandant also said the government has the authority to tell BP what to do, and such orders carry the force of law.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also took a more measured tone at a news conference Monday in Galliano, La., with Salazar and six U.S. senators who had flown over the coast to see the damage. "We continue to hold BP responsible as the responsible party, but we are on them, watching them," she said.

BP said it is doing all it can to stop the leak. Its chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, made the rounds of network morning news shows to say that the company understands people are frustrated.

"Clearly Secretary Salazar is telling us that we need to do this as expediently as we can," Suttles said. "And of course we are."

Hayward, BP's chief executive, walked along oil-soaked Fourchon Beach and said he had underestimated the possible environmental effects.

"I'm as devastated as you are by what I've seen here today," Hayward told reporters after he spoke with cleanup workers in white overalls and yellow boots, some shoveling oily sand into garbage cans. "We are going to do everything in our power to prevent any more oil from coming ashore, and we will clean every last drop up and we will remediate all of the environmental damage."

Mark Kellstrom, an analyst with Summit, N.J.-based Strategic Energy Research, said time might be running out for BP to continue calling the shots. "The rhetoric is growing up in Washington for the politicians to kick out BP and let the government take over," Kellstrom said, though he added that it would be a mistake.

BP had hoped to try a top kill earlier but needed more time to get equipment into place and test it. A top kill has worked on aboveground oil wells in Kuwait and Iraq but has never before been attempted so far underwater.

Suttles said the biggest technical challenge is that the fluid must be pumped in very quickly, and engineers need to make sure it goes into the well, not out through the leaking pipe, which could make the leak worse.

A containment device is on the seafloor, ready to be put in place if the top kill fails or makes the leak worse. It is a smaller version of a 100-ton box that BP lowered several weeks ago in hopes of capturing much of the oil. But it got clogged with icy crystals, and BP was forced to abandon it.

Engineers are working on several other backup plans in case the top kill doesn't work, including injecting assorted junk into the well to clog it up, and lowering a new blowout preventer on top of the one that failed.

The only certain permanent solution is a pair of relief wells crews have already started drilling, but the task could take at least two months.

In another source of tension between BP and the government, the company was still using a certain chemical dispersant Monday to fight the oil despite orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to employ something less toxic.

"If we can find an alternative that is less toxic and available, we will switch to that product," Suttles said. "To date, we've struggled to find an alternative either that had less risk to the environment or that was readily available."

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson called BP's response "insufficient."

Others have blamed the administration for not doing enough, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who said Sunday on Fox News that Obama was being lax in his response to the spill.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called the criticism ill-informed and suggested Palin needed a blowout preventer, the technical term for the device intended to prevent an oil spill from becoming a full-scale catastrophe. The phrase has entered the political vernacular since the one on the Gulf well failed.

"You've got to have a license to drive a car in this country, but regrettably you can get on a TV show and say virtually anything," Gibbs said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=A2KIKvKrQPtLbdEAFDqp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


....saying the government has neither the company's expertise nor its deep-sea equipment. "To push BP out of the way would raise a question, to replace them with what?"

Exxon - Shell - Texaco - Murphy .... John Ballard who went to the Titanic ...


comments

So many nuclear submarines, but none can handle this leak! Is something is missing here?

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They should though help the Governor with his plans to protect the coast line. But they have to wait for an enviromental study first. What a laugh

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Can't they use duct tape or super glue. It really is tragic. Unfortunately, this will not inspire any changes in our society. It will not make us focus on any better ways to use energy or take better care of our planet. It's shameful.

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I don't know what Louisiana wants the feds to do. They have for years voted Republican because they wanted smaller government, let big business do whatever they want, they bring jobs. This and Katrina, you people brought it on yourselves. Regulations are there for a reason and now maybe you understand that, or probably not, who knows.

But the Obama administration waived the regs in regard to Deepwater Horizon because BP said they were not needed with this new technology. Thanks for playing...

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Dear Government,

It's a national emergency boneheads, do something!

[Jolie Rouge]

Louisana Gov. Jindal blasts Obama inaction, moves on sand booms
By Michelle Malkin • May 24, 2010 04:36 AM
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/05/24/louisana-gov-jindal-blasts-obama-inaction-moves-on-sand-booms/

This is leadership on the front lines, not just on the sidelines. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been working non-stop over the past month to protect his state from the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill — and from the bureaucratic delays in the Obama administration.

Here is the Emergency.Louisiana.gov page with extensive updates and resources on the state’s emergency response to the crisis, dating back to April 22. http://emergency.la.gov/

Via NECN: http://www.necn.com/05/23/10/Jindal-tired-of-waiting-for-approval-to-/landing.html?blockID=240006&feedID=4215


Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said the state will not waiting for federal approval to begin building sand barriers to protect the coastline from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Oil has pushed at least 12 miles into Louisiana’s marshes, with two major pelican rookeries awash in crude.

Gov. Jindal was critical of the amount of boom his state received to ward off the oil seeping toward the coastline. But his major gripe comes at the expense of the Army Corps of Engineers, who have yet to give the go-ahead for the building of sand booms to protect the Louisiana wetlands. He used photographic evidence of oil breaking through hard booms, soft booms and another layer of protection, before being finally being corralled by a sand boom built by the National Guard. “It is so much better for us. We don’t want oil on one inch of Louisiana’s coastline, but we’d much rather fight this oil off of a hard coast, off of an island, off of an island, off of a sandy beach on our coastal islands, rather than having to fight it inside in these wetlands,” Gov. Jindal said, making the case for sand booms.

The governor said he has been forced to protect Louisiana without the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, which is weighing the ecological impact of the construction of more sand booms. “We are not waiting for them. We are going to build it,” Jindal said.


At least one federal official is taking some responsibility: http://www.wwltv.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/Jindal-questions-oil-spill-response-Coast-Guard-official-takes-blame--94624594.html


The oil mass continues moving west, and as the toxic sludge begins to make landfall in Terrebonne, Capt. Edwin Stanton, who heads up the Coast Guard’s response, is taking blame. “The governor is right. It’s too slow, and if it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine, for not pushing (BP) hard enough perhaps,” Stanton said.“We did have a problem with getting boom down here to begin with, but there seems to be boom that is in the staging areas that needs to be put out.”

Then, in an exchange with a reporter, he went further.


Stanton: “It’s my job to direct this response in Louisiana.”

Reporter: “Why didn’t you do it?”

Stanton: “Well, the why — is that really important?”

Reporter: “Yes sir, we live here.”

Stanton: “Well, I guess I’m just slow and dumb.”

It’s a start.

***

More: Jindal is scheduled to speak with President Obama in a conference call later today. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24spill.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Put the boot on their necks, Gov. Jindal. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/05/02/salazar_keep_boot_on_neck_of_bp.html

***

Obama has sent the Justice Department to look at the oil spill. Inquiring minds want to know: Are they going there to uncover things…or cover things up? http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/05/23/WH-Justice-Dept-looking-at-oil-spill/UPI-10881274643675/


Plaquemines Parish President Blasts Efforts
Explicit language warning Video : http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=12534748

[Jolie Rouge]

Haunting images of the gulf oil disaster
Mon May 24, 8:24 pm ET

It’s been more than a month since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and blew out an undersea well that continues to gush oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In the following weeks, there have been attempts to contain and control the scope of the environmental damage.

But so far none have been successful. Over the weekend, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced he intended to proceed with plans to construct sand booms to protect his state's shoreline — without waiting for federal approval. Meanwhile, engineers for BP are working feverishly to prepare for their "top kill" maneuver, hoping an injection of heavy mud will stop the leak.

Dead sharks and dolphins are washing ashore. Crabs, turtles and birds are being found soaked in oil as the slick sloshes into Louisiana’s wetlands. South of New Orleans, chocolate-like globs of oil have shut down the public beach.

Coast Guard officials say the spill’s impact now stretches 150 miles. Some scientists fear the spreading plumes will catch the ocean current to the Florida Keys and up to the eastern seaboard.

Photographers' images, some of them chillingly beautiful, can only begin to hint at the enormity of the disaster.


[center]

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/f/fe/ffe24ae8ee9ecda33da70fffc5eacd31.jpeg

Shrimp boats equipped with booms collect oil in Chandeleur Sound, La., on May 5.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/c/86/c8653de18bc22a556b6cf2a0ed1c406c.jpeg

The oil slick slides past an oil rig, top right, in Chandeleur Sound on May 5.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/8/70/870241346bec991639157f82af4ad542.jpeg

An oil-soaked bird struggles against the side of an Iron Horse supply vessel
at the site of the oil spill off Louisiana on May 9.
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/8/65/865de06139fbd8c7a871ee8bde78f61e.jpeg

A dead jellyfish floats amid oil May 6 in the Gulf of Mexico, southwest of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River on the coast of Louisiana.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/85/1852f7657262209428f1b06b036a0b33.jpeg

An aerial view of the northern Chandeleur barrier islands, 20 miles from the main Louisiana coastline, shows sheens of oil reaching land May 6.
(AP Photo/David Quinn)

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/5/33/533466486ca2c4c3fa583d1439755342.jpeg

Pelicans fly past a nest of eggs apparently stained with oil on a Louisiana island May 22. The island is home to hundreds of brown pelican nests as well as terns, gulls and roseated spoonbills.
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


More ... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100524/sc_ynews/ynews_sc2199;_ylt=A2KIKutpBPxLuU8Ak7ms0NUE;_ylu=X3 oDMTJjbXQ2cjV1BGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwNTI0L3luZXdz X3NjMjE5OQRwb3MDOARzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBHNsaw NpbnBob3Rvc2hhdW4-

Even more disturbing... why, after the "moretorium" on off shore drilling, is there 7 new drill sites with 5 new environmental over-rides???

---

I can't understand why BP didn't have a plan to deal with an oil spill before this happened. It is way too late to be coming up with ways to "solve" the oil spill now. Let's hope that Obama learns from this and realizes that we can't take these risks by drilling for oil on U.S. coasts.

And if a Republican was President the liberals would be going crazy. But cuz its Obama, they don't give a crap!!! Look at the news, its not that important, old news!!!

Hey libs and enviornmentalists....how do you like the mighty Obama now???

[Jolie Rouge]

As slick spreads, so does frustration
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 35 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Oil spill frustration is rampant.

The White House is being pounded for not acting more aggressively in the month-old oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration is hitting back, mostly at BP. Louisiana is threatening to take matters into its own hands. The truth is, the government has little direct experience at either the national or state level at stopping deepwater oil leaks — and few realistic options.

With the oil flowing and spreading at a furious rate, President Barack Obama has accused BP of a "breakdown of responsibility." He named a special independent commission to review what happened.

But the administration seems to want to have it both ways — insisting it's in charge while also insisting that BP do the heavy lifting. The White House is arguing that government officials aren't just watching from the sidelines, but also acknowledging there's just so much the government can do directly.

"They are 5,000 feet down. BP or the private sector alone have the means to deal with that problem down there. It's not government equipment that is going to be used to do that," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a White House briefing on Monday.

"They are the responsible party. But we have the authority to direct them," he added.

There are political risks both ways. If the federal government took control somehow, it would own the problem and any failure would belong to Obama.

But the flip side is that Obama could suffer politically if his administration is seen as falling short of staying on top of the problem or not working hard to find a solution.

All of BP's attempts to stop the leak have failed. It was to try another technique on Wednesday in which heavy mud and cement would be shot into the well to plug it up.

White House energy adviser Carol Browner made the rounds of morning television news shows on Tuesday, expressing continued frustration but also voicing hope that Wednesday's procedure would succeed where others have failed.

As to who is running the show, "We have been in charge and we'll continue to be in charge. But clearly BP has expertise and that needs to be brought to bear," she told CBS.

In the past, the government has turned to oil industry experts to deal with oil disasters.

It famously recruited legendary oil well fighters Paul N. "Red" Adair and Edward "Coots" Matthews to help in the first Iraq war. Retreating Iraqi troops deliberately spilled 462 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf and set more than 700 oilfield fires.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, Congress dictated in the 1990 Oil Pollution Act that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies.

That has pretty much been the model ever since. And the administration insists that's exactly what it is doing — although clearly not everyone agrees.

Anger grows as the slick spreads and washes ashore into environmentally sensitive marshes and waterways. Nerves are frayed and finger-pointing in full swing.

The administration says it is losing patience with BP PLC's efforts.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters outside BP's headquarters in Houston on Sunday.

Just what did Salazar mean by "push them out of the way"? Officials have struggled since in explaining.

"That's more of a metaphor," the Coast Guard's Allen said Monday. "'Push BP out of the way' would raise the question — replace them with what?"

Allen, responsible for oversight of the spill response, said he's frustrated too, along with other Americans.

Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano led a Senate delegation to the region Monday.

"We are going to stay on this and stay on BP until this gets done and it gets done the right way," Napolitano said after flying over the affected area.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, has taken swipes at BP and other oil companies involved in the disaster as well as the federal government. Jindal said he was going to call out members of the Louisiana National Guard to join state wildlife and fisheries agents to supplement a federal response he called inadequate.

In particular, Jindal assailed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for failing to sign off on a plan to build a chain of protective sand barriers — or berms — off the coast to help block the oil.

"We are not waiting for them. We are going to build it" ourselves, Jindal said. U.S. officials say the Corps is nearing a final decision.

The spill began April 20 after the Deepwater Horizon rig owned by driller Transocean and leased by BP exploded, killing 11 workers. Millions of gallons of oil have spewed from the blown well.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer at BP PLC, made the round of network news shows Monday with the same message: "We are doing everything we can, everything I know." He said the energy giant, formerly known as British Petroleum, understands and shares everyone's frustration.

But history isn't encouraging when it comes to underwater ruptures.

The last major spill in the Gulf was in June 1979, when an offshore drilling rig in Mexican waters — the Ixtoc I — blew up, releasing 140 million gallons of oil. The well was owned by Mexico's state oil company, known as Pemex. It took Pemex and a series of U.S. contractors nearly nine months to cap the well, and a great deal of the oil contaminated Mexican and U.S. waters.

If patience is necessary, it isn't a particularly forthcoming quality in these tense times.

Even as strong an Obama ally as Democratic consultant James Carville has been taking shots at the administration.

A Louisiana native, Carville told CNN the administration was "risking everything by this 'go along with BP' strategy. ... If you let BP handle it ... it's not going to go away. It is a disaster of the first magnitude and they've got to go to Plan B."

But so far, there was no Plan B on the table short of waiting until August, when two relief wells are expected to reach the oil deep under the ocean floor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_an/us_gulf_spill_woes_analysis/print;_ylt=A2KIKvFdCvxLdQkA4QFOxBIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill: Could NASA come to the rescue?
By Robert Zaretsky Tue May 25, 10:42 am ET

Houston – Eager to avoid the public relations disaster that decked the Bush administration in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the Obama White House has made a great effort to be on top of the oil crisis in the Gulf. The government has mobilized the usual suspects – the Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard – and pried open the usual cans of alphabet soup: the NOAA, EPA, MMS, etc.

But, one arrangement of letters is missing from the mix: NASA.

The “aeronautic” in the National Aeronautic and Space Administration seems to explain why: NASA’s place is in outer space, not inner space. But it may well be that these two frontiers – weightless vacuum versus watery depths – actually share common ground. While BP faces a vast environmental and financial crisis, NASA faces a profound institutional and identity crisis. These crises could lead to a mutual solution. At the very least, NASA’s experience could now be tapped to help the oil industry avoid future catastrophes.

IN PICTURES: The Gulf Oil Spill

Consider first the delicate issue of risk assessment: NASA has won its reputation for great caution by the dint of tragic experience. There are few organizations where the costs of error are so great, and consequently the quest for safety is so pronounced. There is a veritable culture based on testing and operational redundancy. NASA’s official motto is “For the Benefit of All,” but in the wake of the Challenger and Columbia accidents, the unofficial motto has become “Never Again.”

As a government organization, NASA’s bottom line is not financial, but prudential. Its culture diverges dramatically from the culture of, say, BP or Transocean. These firms, of course, would never knowingly gamble with the lives of their employees. With undoubted sincerity, one of Transocean’s lawyers dismissed the criticism that his client was cutting corners in pursuit of profit: “It is in [Transocean’s] interest that these tests be performed correctly and completely.”

Who among us would disagree with this claim? But who among us would disagree with the proposition that the terms “knowingly” and “interests” are neither simple nor straightforward? The limits of our “knowledge” in a particular field are usually self-imposed, while our “interests” are determined by our goals.

Take, for example, the protocols used in deepwater drilling. The Minerals Management Services (MMS) is the government agency tasked with oversight of offshore rigs. Yet recent reports reveal serious lapses. The sex and drug scandal of 2008 and special gifts from the oil industry were bad enough. But the bigger problem is that MMS left the testing criteria for the failed blowout devices – destined to become to our age what O-rings were to the age of the Challenger space shuttle that exploded in 1986 – to Transocean, the very same firm that operated these devices under the pressure of meeting schedule, budgetary, and overall programmatic concerns.

Much has been written on the redundancy capacity of the blowout preventers. But two elements to the reports have been constant. First, the existing system depended on a single hydraulic line. As a result, whether there are three or 300 redundancy mechanisms, if the hydraulic line fails, they all fail. Second, the MMS never demanded the deployment of additional backup systems, despite the fact that other oil-producing countries require them.

If NASA were a country, it would have to be in this same company. Would it have ever put into service so critical a machine like the blowout preventer without adding several layers of fault protection, perhaps beyond redundancy on the device itself? Absolutely not – unless it were either impossible or the risk was deemed acceptable. Yet it is equally hard to imagine, in a world of self-regulation, corporate players like BP, Transocean, and Cameron making a very passionate case for the additional complexity and associated overhead of such systems to reduce the risk to their shareholders. Inevitably, corporate “interests” do not always dovetail with public interest.

These issues are largely legal and political, and will take months to resolve.

But NASA could play a critical role in the pressing technical issues that now confront the oil spill in the Gulf. While it appears self-evident that all appropriate government agencies should be called on to act in any national crisis, NASA remains on the sidelines nearly a month since the fatal event in the Gulf.

This is tragic.

NASA’s unrivalled expertise and experience in extreme remote environments, complex operations, high pressure complex fluid flows, data and imaging needs, robotic systems, complex analytical modeling, manufacture of critical and specialized hardware, and safety and hazards management make it a perfect fit as a key responder in the Gulf.

Not only might it have the institutional knowledge to help the oil industry with current safety management, but it might also rescue BP from such errors in the future. Who knows? It might also rescue itself.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100525/cm_csm/303751/print;_ylt=A2KIKwIhD_xLtBQAmz67e8UF;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Code Pink on the BP oil spill: Never let a crisis go to waste
by: Sister Toldjah on May 25, 2010 at 5:24 pm
http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2010/05/25/code-pink-on-the-bp-oil-spill-never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste-nsfw-video/

The Houston Chronicle reports on an eye-opening “greeting” of sorts that the radical feministas at Code Pink gave to BP Oil execs in Houston Monday: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7020580.html


A group of costumed and semi-nude protesters marched onto the grounds of BP’s U.S. headquarters in west Houston Monday morning, calling for the company to be held accountable for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and for the government to act.

The protesters, numbering almost 50, were organized by women’s activist group Codepink. Waving banners and clanging pots, the group, escorted by three Houston police cars, marched from nearby Transocean offices to just outside the BP building.

Transocean owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and BP leased it.

“BP, what do you say? How many fish did you kill today? BP, what do you say? How many millions did you make today?” the protesters shouted.

Some Energy Corridor employees gathered across the street, cameras and phones in hand, to take pictures and record the protest.

Some of the protesters were almost entirely nude save for bits of tape and strategically placed signs. It was to represent the “naked truth” of BP’s involvement in the spill. Others were dressed as fish or birds and then doused in fake oil by a man wearing a BP logo and glasses in the shape of dollar signs.

Sounds more like “Code Stink.” Eww


Um, here’s some – er, raw video taken by the Code Pinksters from the protest (content warning): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xFTaQCV3aI


If your eyes haven’t completely gouged themselves out of their sockets after watching that, you can view another couple of short “official” videos here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPwW12Woj0s and here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3e-YYbkjjk

Go here http://www.memeorandum.com/100525/p56#a100525p56 for news and commentary on the latest development on what’s happening in the Gulf of MX – and beyond – as a result of the oil spill, and pray for the boots on the ground trying to stop the spill and/or contain the damage. I know a lot of blame is being thrown around right now, a lot of it deserved, but I weep when I see pictures of what’s happening to fishermen and the coastlines and the wildlife http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2010/05/12/GA2010051202394.html?sid=ST2010052404233 My heart goes out to them.

As far as Code Pink? My disdain and disgust for them at this point couldn’t be deeper. Opportunistic witches. :witch: ... they won’t criticize their messiah, Obama, no matter how badly he mishandles this crisis.

Maybe when he gets back from his next vacation…

[Jolie Rouge]

Witness: BP took 'shortcuts' before well blowout
By Greg Bluestein And Mike Baker, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago

COVINGTON, La. – Senior managers complained oil giant BP was "taking shortcuts" by replacing heavy drilling fluid with saltwater in the well that blew out, triggering the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to witness statements obtained by The Associated Press.

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd., told Coast Guard investigators about the complaints. The seawater, which would have provided less weight to contain surging pressure from the ocean depths, was being used to prepare for dropping a final blob of cement into the well.

"I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out," Crawford said in his statement.

A spokesman for BP, which was leasing the rig Deepwater Horizon when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, declined to comment.

BP conducted tests Wednesday in preparation for its latest bid to plug the leaking well by force-feeding it heavy drilling mud and cement. BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said on NBC's "Today" show that he would decide Wednesday morning whether to allow crews to try the procedure called a top kill.

Meanwhile, the statements from workers ahead of a hearing in New Orleans Wednesday and a congressional memo about a BP internal investigation of the blast indicated warning signs were ignored. Tests less than an hour before the well blew out found a buildup of pressure that was an "indicator of a very large abnormality," BP's investigator said, according to the congressional memo.

Still, the rig team was "satisfied" that another test was successful and resumed adding the seawater, said the memo by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak to members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is investigating what went wrong.

There were other signs of problems, including an unexpected loss of fluid from a pipe known as a riser five hours before the explosion, which the memo said could have indicated a leak in the blowout preventer, a huge piece of equipment that should have shut down the well in case of an emergency. BP has cited its failure as a contributor to the blast.

Frustration is growing with BP and the federal government as several efforts to stop the leak have failed. At least 7 million gallons of crude have spilled into the sea, fouling Louisiana's marshes and coating birds and other wildlife.

President Barack Obama prepared to head to the Gulf on Friday to review efforts to halt the oil that scientists said seems to be growing significantly darker, from what they can see in an underwater video. It suggests that heavier, more-polluting oil is spewing out.

Ahead of his trip, Obama planned to address an Interior Department review of offshore drilling that is expected to recommend tougher safety protocols and inspections for the industry, according to an administration official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the public release Thursday of the findings of a 30-day review Obama ordered after the spill.

A new report from the Interior Department's acting inspector general alleged that drilling regulators have been so close to oil and gas companies they've been accepting gifts including hunting and fishing trips and even negotiating to go work for them.

The top kill BP is poised to try Wednesday involves pumping enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well.

Engineers plan to follow it up with cement that the company hopes will permanently seal the well. It may be several days before BP knows if it worked. Hayward earlier pegged its chances of success at 60 to 70 percent.

Bob Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the procedure carries a high risk of failure because of the velocity at which the oil may be spewing.

"I certainly pray that it works, because if it doesn't there's this long waiting time" before BP can dig relief wells that would cut off the flow, Bea said.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Kunzelman in New Orleans, Jeff Donn in Boston, Ben Evans, Ben Feller, Fred Frommer and Erica Werner in Washington, and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100526/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqhv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--
___


US rig inspectors received gifts from oil companies, report says
By Mark Clayton Tue May 25, 11:17 am ET

The federal agency overseeing offshore oil and natural-gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has been cited again for "ethical lapses" that included allowing rig inspectors and others to receive gifts from oil companies.

The lapses are outlined in new report from the Inspector General's Office of the Interior Department, focusing on the actions of employees at the Lake Charles, La., district office of the Minerals Management Service (MMS). The report is a follow-up to a 2007 one, also by the inspector general, about the same district office. Both reports cite violations of federal regulations and agency ethics rules.

The new report alleges that inspectors and others used government computers to view pornography and received sports tickets and lunches from oil companies.

“The Inspector General report describes reprehensible activities of employees of MMS between 2000 and 2008,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an e-mailed statement. “This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between some elements of MMS and the oil and gas industry."

The new report was not released to the press by the inspector general but was described in Secretary Salazar’s e-mail.

Salazar noted his orders to "clean house" at MMS shortly after he took over at the Interior Department in 2009. "I fully support the Inspector General's strong work to root out the bad apples in MMS and we will follow through on her recommendations," he said in the e-mail.

Earlier this month, Salazar ordered the MMS split into two parts, citing the "conflicting missions" of the revenue-collections mandate of the agency and its safety and enforcement mandate.

The inspector general’s recommendations include taking action to terminate, discipline, and refer workers for criminal prosecution, Salazar said. He also wrote that he has asked the Inspector General's Office to "expand her investigation" to find out if any unethical conduct has occurred since he put in place new agency ethics rules in 2009.

The report on the Lake Charles district office is the second major indictment of the MMS. A 2008 report cited ethical lapses in the agency's Lakewood, Colo., office, where royalty-collections employees were found to be having sex with and accepting gifts from oil-industry personnel.

A key question coming out of the new report is whether MMS inspectors failed to enforce safety and other standards on the drill rigs – and whether policies or practices need to be revised to ensure oil operations in the Gulf are conducted safely, Salazar noted in his e-mail. This is of special concern since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and burned on April 20. The oil from that blowout has so far fouled a large part of the Gulf of Mexico and threatened numerous species.

One report by The New York Times, which cited a leaked copy of the report, said MMS rig inspectors had in some cases allowed industry representatives to write reports in pencil, with the inspectors then writing them over in ink.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100525/ts_csm/303752/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqiOe8UF;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Witness: BP took 'shortcuts' before well blowout
By Greg Bluestein And Mike Baker, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago

COVINGTON, La. – Senior managers complained oil giant BP was "taking shortcuts" by replacing heavy drilling fluid with saltwater in the well that blew out, triggering the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to witness statements obtained by The Associated Press.

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd., told Coast Guard investigators about the complaints. The seawater, which would have provided less weight to contain surging pressure from the ocean depths, was being used to prepare for dropping a final blob of cement into the well.

"I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out," Crawford said in his statement.

A spokesman for BP, which was leasing the rig Deepwater Horizon when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, declined to comment.

BP conducted tests Wednesday in preparation for its latest bid to plug the leaking well by force-feeding it heavy drilling mud and cement. BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said on NBC's "Today" show that he would decide Wednesday morning whether to allow crews to try the procedure called a top kill.

Meanwhile, the statements from workers ahead of a hearing in New Orleans Wednesday and a congressional memo about a BP internal investigation of the blast indicated warning signs were ignored. Tests less than an hour before the well blew out found a buildup of pressure that was an "indicator of a very large abnormality," BP's investigator said, according to the congressional memo.

Still, the rig team was "satisfied" that another test was successful and resumed adding the seawater, said the memo by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak to members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is investigating what went wrong.

There were other signs of problems, including an unexpected loss of fluid from a pipe known as a riser five hours before the explosion, which the memo said could have indicated a leak in the blowout preventer, a huge piece of equipment that should have shut down the well in case of an emergency. BP has cited its failure as a contributor to the blast.

Frustration is growing with BP and the federal government as several efforts to stop the leak have failed. At least 7 million gallons of crude have spilled into the sea, fouling Louisiana's marshes and coating birds and other wildlife.

President Barack Obama prepared to head to the Gulf on Friday to review efforts to halt the oil that scientists said seems to be growing significantly darker, from what they can see in an underwater video. It suggests that heavier, more-polluting oil is spewing out.

Ahead of his trip, Obama planned to address an Interior Department review of offshore drilling that is expected to recommend tougher safety protocols and inspections for the industry, according to an administration official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the public release Thursday of the findings of a 30-day review Obama ordered after the spill.

A new report from the Interior Department's acting inspector general alleged that drilling regulators have been so close to oil and gas companies they've been accepting gifts including hunting and fishing trips and even negotiating to go work for them.

The top kill BP is poised to try Wednesday involves pumping enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well.

Engineers plan to follow it up with cement that the company hopes will permanently seal the well. It may be several days before BP knows if it worked. Hayward earlier pegged its chances of success at 60 to 70 percent.

Bob Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the procedure carries a high risk of failure because of the velocity at which the oil may be spewing.

"I certainly pray that it works, because if it doesn't there's this long waiting time" before BP can dig relief wells that would cut off the flow, Bea said.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Kunzelman in New Orleans, Jeff Donn in Boston, Ben Evans, Ben Feller, Fred Frommer and Erica Werner in Washington, and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100526/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqhv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--
___


US rig inspectors received gifts from oil companies, report says
By Mark Clayton Tue May 25, 11:17 am ET

The federal agency overseeing offshore oil and natural-gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has been cited again for "ethical lapses" that included allowing rig inspectors and others to receive gifts from oil companies.

The lapses are outlined in new report from the Inspector General's Office of the Interior Department, focusing on the actions of employees at the Lake Charles, La., district office of the Minerals Management Service (MMS). The report is a follow-up to a 2007 one, also by the inspector general, about the same district office. Both reports cite violations of federal regulations and agency ethics rules.

The new report alleges that inspectors and others used government computers to view pornography and received sports tickets and lunches from oil companies.

“The Inspector General report describes reprehensible activities of employees of MMS between 2000 and 2008,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in an e-mailed statement. “This deeply disturbing report is further evidence of the cozy relationship between some elements of MMS and the oil and gas industry."

The new report was not released to the press by the inspector general but was described in Secretary Salazar’s e-mail.

Salazar noted his orders to "clean house" at MMS shortly after he took over at the Interior Department in 2009. "I fully support the Inspector General's strong work to root out the bad apples in MMS and we will follow through on her recommendations," he said in the e-mail.

Earlier this month, Salazar ordered the MMS split into two parts, citing the "conflicting missions" of the revenue-collections mandate of the agency and its safety and enforcement mandate.

The inspector general’s recommendations include taking action to terminate, discipline, and refer workers for criminal prosecution, Salazar said. He also wrote that he has asked the Inspector General's Office to "expand her investigation" to find out if any unethical conduct has occurred since he put in place new agency ethics rules in 2009.

The report on the Lake Charles district office is the second major indictment of the MMS. A 2008 report cited ethical lapses in the agency's Lakewood, Colo., office, where royalty-collections employees were found to be having sex with and accepting gifts from oil-industry personnel.

A key question coming out of the new report is whether MMS inspectors failed to enforce safety and other standards on the drill rigs – and whether policies or practices need to be revised to ensure oil operations in the Gulf are conducted safely, Salazar noted in his e-mail. This is of special concern since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and burned on April 20. The oil from that blowout has so far fouled a large part of the Gulf of Mexico and threatened numerous species.

One report by The New York Times, which cited a leaked copy of the report, said MMS rig inspectors had in some cases allowed industry representatives to write reports in pencil, with the inspectors then writing them over in ink.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100525/ts_csm/303752/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqiOe8UF;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP begins 'top kill' method to try to plug gusher
By Greg Bluestein And Mike Baker, Associated Press Writer 2 mins ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100526/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqip_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

COVINGTON, La. – BP on Wednesday launched its latest bid to plug the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico by force-feeding it heavy drilling mud, a maneuver known as a "top kill" that has never before been tried 5,000 feet underwater.

The oil giant's chief executive earlier gave the procedure a 60 to 70 percent chance of working, and President Barack Obama cautioned Wednesday there were "no guarantees."

BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said the company will pump mud for hours, and officials have indicated it may be a couple of days before they know whether the procedure is working. The top kill involves pumping enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well, and engineers plan to follow it up with cement to try to permanently seal the well.

BP PLC was leasing the rig Deepwater Horizon when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the spill that has so far spewed at least 7 million gallons into the Gulf. Oil has begun coating birds and washing into Louisiana's delicate wetlands.

Witness statements obtained by The Associated Press show senior managers complained BP was "taking shortcuts" the day of the explosion by replacing heavy drilling fluid with saltwater in the well that blew out.

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd., told Coast Guard investigators about the complaints. The seawater, which would have provided less weight to contain surging pressure from the ocean depths, was being used to prepare for dropping a final blob of cement into the well.

"I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out," Crawford said in his statement. BP declined to comment.

The statements show workers talked just minutes before the blowout about pressure problems in the well. At first, nobody seemed too worried: The chief mate for Transocean left two crew members to deal with the issue on their own.

What began as a routine pressure problem, however, suddenly turned to panic. The workers called bosses to report a situation, with assistant driller Stephen Curtis telling one senior operator that the well was "coming in." Someone told well site leader Donald Vidrine that they were "getting mud back." The toolpusher, Jason Anderson, tried to shut down the well.

It didn't work. Both Curtis and Anderson died in the explosion.

At a hearing in New Orleans on Wednesday, Douglas Brown, the Deepwater Horizon's chief mechanic, testified about what he described as a "skirmish" between someone he called the "company man" — a BP official — and three other employees during a meeting the day of the explosion.

Brown said he didn't pay particular attention to what they were discussing because it did not involve his engine room duties. He later said he did not know the BP official's name.

"The driller outlined what would be taking place, but the company man stood up and said 'We'll be having some changes to that,'" Brown testified. He said the three other workers initially disagreed but "the company man said 'This is how it's going to be.'"

Frustration with BP and the federal government has only grown since then as efforts to stop the leak have failed.

Obama prepared to head to the Gulf on Friday to review efforts to halt the oil that scientists said seems to be growing significantly darker, from what they can see in an underwater video. It suggests that heavier, more-polluting oil is spewing out.

Bob Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the procedure carries a high risk of failure because of the velocity at which the oil may be spewing.

"I certainly pray that it works, because if it doesn't there's this long waiting time" before BP can dig relief wells that would cut off the flow, Bea said.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Kunzelman in New Orleans, Jeff Donn in Boston, Ben Evans, Ben Feller, Fred Frommer and Erica Werner in Washington, Alan Sayre in Kenner, La., Curt Anderson in and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this story.

[Jolie Rouge]

Why This is Obama's Katrina Moment -- Literally
Harry Shearer Wed May 26, 10:32 am ET
Read Harry Shearer's other articles on HuffingtonPost.com

It's all there in the HuffPost archives, posts about the Corps of Engineers choosing what they admit is a "technically (not) superior) solution for the permanent rebuild of the canals whose floodwalls failed catastrophically during Katrina, about the Corps whistleblower's vindicated allegations about the shortcomings of the pumps at those canals, about the White House's silence on those issues during the past year.

Commenters favorable to the Obama administration were virtually unanimous in their defense: he's got a full plate, give him time.

Well, this just in: the President's plate doesn't get any less full the longer the administration proceeds. And today, with a slo-mo environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, and a slo-mo federal response threatening to leave this administration looking as pathetic as oil-soaked pelicans, one thing is clear: a full-throated, thoughtful, energetic response to the remaining problems dogging the rebuilding of the "hurricane risk reduction system" in New Orleans might have given the Obama Administration the aura of caring about the area. Which, in turn, might have inoculated it against the charges from opponents that this is Obama's Katrina moment. Having let last year's opportunity slip by, having been beguiled by the wilful blindness of its automatic-pilot supporters, the administration stands un-inoculated politically against the impression that it's impotent in the face of BP's cupidity, laxity, and mendacity.

How's that plate looking now?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100526/cm_huffpost/589763_201005260932/print;_ylt=ArE9nMfHuKcmFHo6T726tjce6sgF;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

comments

Obama's doing nothing because he got $71K worth of campaign contributions in 2008 from BP.

He's looking to get more for 2012.
----

Hear the mighty roar of silence coming from the liberal left on this. Change, yeah right.

[Jolie Rouge]

Who wrote this ?? :slap:


Short term, oil spill means mini job boom in Gulf
By John Curran, Associated Press Writer Wed May 26, 5:55 am ET

NEW ORLEANS – Much as he hates to say it, Mark Leonard knows it's true: The oil spill that is fouling the Gulf of Mexico may save his family's business.

Leonard, 34, is operations manager for Coastal Tank Cleaning, a company called in to help set booms to prevent oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak from getting into Lake Pontchartrain. The Morgan City-based company sent 10 workers and equipment to a staging area at Fort Pike, on the eastern tip of New Orleans.

"We don't want this to happen," he said. "We didn't want this to be our saving grace to keep the company going. But this is something that I think is helping a lot of companies that were down, and possibly wondering `When is it finally going to pick up?' `When can we start working again and staffing again and paying our bills?'"

The spill, now a month old, could end up killing the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen, restaurant workers, charter boat captains and tourism employees.

But for now, it's triggering a mini-boom in other jobs across the five-state region.

In coastal Louisiana, it's reminiscent of the job boom that followed Hurricane Katrina as thousands were put to work cleaning up debris, gutting house and rebuilding public buildings and entire neighborhoods. In St. Bernard Parish, a suburban New Orleans community where fishermen are working for BP in a fight to save their fishing grounds, the hurricane, which struck Aug. 29, 2005, damaged virtually every building and sank much of the fishing fleet.

Five years later, the area's economy is among the healthiest of major metro areas, according to The Associated Press Economic Stress Index, which assigns counties a score of 1 to 100 based on unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy data.

( Mainly because anyone who was going to leave after Katrina & Rita never came back. The Parish is at a third of it's previous population ... per capita it looks better on paper... but it's only on paper. - JR )

Some analysts believe the economic resilience powered by tens of billions in federal rebuilding aid is unsustainable. Once the money is spent, they say, the tourism-based economy and lower-wage jobs that dominated before Katrina are likely to re-emerge.

BP has spent more than $750 million so far in oil spill response initiatives. Spokesman John Curry said the company has hired more than 20,000 people as part of the response to the April 20 accident and its aftermath. Some are contractors and subcontractors, some are laborers hired to set boom.

Many have taken up residence at staging areas along the coast in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

In the fishing village of Cocodrie, about 80 miles southwest of New Orleans, the staging area sprouted up in a vacant lot at pier 56, next to Coco Marina. "BP has basically moved in and taken the place of the recreational customers," said Michael Glover, whose family runs the 23-room Coco Marina. "We're feeding them three meals a day and they've rented all my rooms. My kitchen staff, my waitstaff, the housekeepers are all doing well, working a little more than usual. We're busy non-stop, every day."

Unskilled labor is getting a boost, too.

In Pensacola, Fla., 4,000 people in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties showed up at recruiting events to apply for 500 potential clean-up jobs. ( Call ICE... )

The Workforce Escarosa Career Center hosted the recruiting for a Texas company looking for people with environmental or haz-mat certification. Only about 400 of the applicants actually had those — of more than 4,000 who applied at four events over a week's time, said Brittany Bailey, a spokeswoman for the center. "We were surprised by the number of people who came," Bailey said. "These were dirty jobs. One requirement was you had to be able to lift 40 pounds. These were not desk jobs. It shows how desperate people really are at this point. We've never had lines wrapped around the building."

In fishing-reliant Gulf communities like Bayou La Batre, Ala., captains barred from fishing are signing contracts to pull the barriers across bays and shorelines, or to maintain the booms. "It has helped to a point, but there's a limited number of people who have been able to get these jobs," said oyster harvester ***** Bates, vice president of the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama.

The skippers must get Coast Guard safety certifications before signing contracts to do the work, Bates said, and many must also be trained to handle hazardous materials. The demand for work is so great that boat workers quickly filled up a class held at a small church. "We thought 300 would show up, and then 600 showed up. People couldn't even get in the building, and they had to reschedule another session," said Bates. "A few hundred have gotten work (but) we are still a long way from getting there."

In Cocodrie, the gravel-and-oyster shell parking lot on the Terrebonne Bay waterfront has a steady stream of trucks bringing in boom, contractors with skimmer boats and newly-hired hands who make trips out to barrier islands.

Still, everyone involved seems to know that whatever good flows from the oil spill in the short term, the long-term price will be heavy.

"If they can't stop it, this could be the end of my business," said Glover. "There's already a public perception that Louisiana's covered in oil. And nobody comes to Cocodrie if they can't fish. If they can't fish, I don't rent rooms, I don't sell meals, I don't have charters."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100526/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_jobs/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqip_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

This "mini-job boom" is barely hiring those that the BP Spill itself has forced out of work.

In the long run this will cost thousands of jobs. Family who have made a living for generation now will be standing in the unemployment line. The government I feel is going to let BP off the hook and make the tax payer pick up the bill.

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What the heck. Now the MSM is trying to spin this as having some benefit. Good grief.

---

This from Our Lady Of The Roses web site. Much more where this came from.


"There will be more floods with death, more volcano eruptions with death, more accidents that are not accidents, until you will surely come to your senses and realize that there is a higher power working at this time to bring you to your knees." - Our Lady of the Roses, June 18, 1986

The Cover-up of BP's Gulf Coast Oil Rig Explosion and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster...

WMR has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a “mega-disaster.”

--

[Jolie Rouge]

Cousteau dives into 'nightmare' US oil slick
43 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau would have been "horrified" by the devastation being wrought by a huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill, his grandson said after diving down into the seas.

"There's a chemical dispersant/oil mixture that is now... over vast areas of the Gulf and as we feared it's not concentrated at the surface," Philippe Cousteau Jr. told CNN, adding "this absolutely is a nightmare."

"We were about 15 to 20 feet down and it was dispersed into smaller and smaller particles throughout the water column in these billowing clouds that were just circling us, encompassing us in this toxic soup. It was very, very alarming."

Oil has been spewing into the seas since an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, just off the Louisiana coast, and the spreading slick is seeping into the state's fragile marshlands.

"I know that my father and grandfather would have been doing this if they were alive and that they would have been just as horrified by what they saw as I was," Cousteau said in an entry on his blog ( http://www.earthecho.org/blog ).

During the "gruelling" dive which took three weeks to prepare, Cousteau and his team wore full hazmat diving suits and heavy hard hat helmets weighing some 30 pounds (15 kilos).

He said as the team were down there "wave after wave of oil/chemical dispersant mix washed over us."

"This was one of the most terrible experiences of my life seeing first hand what this oil spill looks like under the water and knowing that this contamination is spreading over hundreds of miles."

And as BP Wednesday readied a new bid to cap the leak, Cousteau warned: "Even if they do manage to cut off the oil tomorrow, the oil that has escaped will spread, following currents as far as the Arctic Circle via the Gulf Stream, wreaking havoc along the way.

"I can only hope that we learn from this and start to truly take the kind of drastic action necessary to begin the decades long road to recovery."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100526/en_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmentcousteau/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqir_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Public opinion turning against Obama on oil spill
1 hr 6 mins ago

The American public is losing its patience with President Obama over his handling of the Gulf Coast oil spill.

In the five weeks since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama had largely escaped political fallout. But as BP attempts yet again to seal the leak, a new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a majority of Americans unhappy with Obama's handling of the spill. According to the poll, 53 percent rate Obama's handling "poor" or "very poor"; 43 percent believe Obama is doing a good job.

Yet the poll also finds that the public tends to blame others in the mess more than it blames the White House. Asked broadly about the federal government's role, 60 percent rated the response "poor." BP got the lowest marks: 73 percent of Americans gave the company's handling of the spill a "poor" rating. Still, a whopping 68 percent say BP should remain in charge of the cleanup.

More than two-thirds of respondents called the gulf spill a "disaster," and of them, 37 percent considered it the "worst disaster in 100 years." Yet 52 percent of registered voters still support offshore drilling. That number is slightly down compared with other polls in recent weeks, including an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month in which nearly 60 percent of voters still agreed with offshore drilling.

And it will no doubt give the White House pause is the shifting public sentiment on Obama's handling of the spill. Earlier this month, the president seemed to be escaping most of the public wrath over the disaster. An Associated Press poll released May 13 found mostly good-to-neutral marks for Obama's role in the mess: 42 percent approved, 33 percent disapproved and 21 percent said they were neutral.

But with the leak still unplugged and the economic and environmental impact only worsening, the White House has increasingly come under fire for not doing enough to handle the cleanup and control the spill. That includes criticism both from Republicans including Sarah Palin, who tried to make an issue of BP's donations to Obama's presidential campaign, and Democratic allies like James Carville, who slammed Obama for being too "hands off."

Broken down along party lines: 63 percent of Democrats believe Obama is doing a "good" job on the spill, while 68 percent of Republicans rate the president's job as "poor." Among independent voters — the voting bloc credited most for Obama's victory in 2008 — 58 percent describe Obama's job on the spill as "poor."

White House officials aren’t unaware of the shift. In recent days, they’ve stepped up their media strategy in response to the spill. Tomorrow, Obama will hold his first full-fledged news conference in nearly a year to take questions on the issue. And Friday, he is scheduled to make his second visit to the Gulf.

Will it be enough to placate an increasingly frustrated public?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2270/print;_ylt=ArE9nMfHuKcmFHo6T726tjcSq594;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

Video : Carville's Oil Outburst

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/20023569


comments

Obama has never been one to react to any kind of crisis since he became President. He spends way too much time looking for photo ops and patting himself on the back for nothing. It's time to step up to the plate and start taking care of the problems we have here instead of looking for more ways to lead us down his path of Socialism.

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Obama got the most BP financial campaign contributions of any candidate. Any wonder why he's been so slow to react? Big companies and special intrests (both in and out of this country) correctly identified that he is a shallow, self involved, narcicisstic fool who would spend more time throwing parties, chomping on kobe steaks and golfing than taking any real intrest in governing the country. The damage done while this idiot is in charge and his gangster administration is digging a literal hole under the bank is incalculable. This bunch makes previous administrations look like amatuers.

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Crisis management is not his forte. There is no speech he can give to fix this. And he seems barely motivated to act like a President when the political game is not the main focus. He struggles with details - which is why he hasn't read the Arizona immigration law, or his own health care bill, for that matter.

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This incident is as much Obamas fault as Katrina was Bushs'.... but notice how differently the media has portrayed the Administrations and their response.

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Obama has "escaped political fall back" on much more than the oil spill. Very handy having a media who just accepts the "press releases" and "photos" handed to them from the White House. And hardly a word about Obama's excessive lack of news conferences (last one was in July). Doesn't have to answer any questions let alone tough questions. How easy the media makes it for him. So much for doing their jobs and looking out for the people. I wasn't a big fan of Bush, but it sure is obvious now the "double standard" and "hypocrisy" that exists now. MAKES ME SICK!

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Obama is a post turtle. When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'. You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb a$$ put him up there to begin with.

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I don't believe it's Obama's fault that the spill happened but I'm sick of him making statements such as that he "won't tolerate" this. He makes it sound like he has absolutely no authority in the situation when he has a great deal more power than the average citizen and he's still not doing a single thing anyway.

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It is the WH fault that they gave waivers to BP on inspections. Also the WH didn't check for disaster recovery on the rig. They should allow drilling in Alaska, then we'd be dealing with something on the surface and not 5000 feet deep in the ocean.

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Obama is no more at fault here than Bush was of Katrina...............but people chose to see it differently. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and their people had 3 days of forecast of a hurricane coming; a lot had sense enough to leave - others chose to sit and wait...... The mayor and the governor were safe so they waited like idiots also, well then you see the results of what happened - yet Bush got the blame. He gave the ok for the rescuers but Fema and NO mayor and La governor did not get their parts in place - yet Bush gets the blame. So now it is Obamas turn and by the way he has taken his time also.

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As any school child knows, it is the responsibility of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to protect America's costal waters, coast line & border... the Obama Regime has F-A-I-L-E-D MISERABLY!

Obama can't protect America from EITHER a flood of ILLEGAL ALIENS - OR - a flood of oil sludge...

Hey Barack, how about a big smiley Cajun "Shout-Out" to all those oiled up and DYING sea turtles, pelicans & dolphins... that would be MORE than you have done so far, you big stupid JERK (oh, excuse me, President J-E-R-K!) sir...

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If this spill happened during Bushs administration, the radical liberals would be calling for his execution. Talking heads disparaging his non action. Not a word spoken when it's a Liberal like Obama in charge, he gets a pass. Liberals are idiots, and don't apply reasoning universaly, ONLY when it's conveient. Obama has done nothing, a do nothing President that is sliding the country into the New World Order, "Interantional Order" as he wants.

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What has the Obama administration done? Nothing. They just send down Salazar and Napoletano, issue a few press releases and thats it. Where is the Joe Sestak story. The Obama administration bribing a politican with a job in exchange for dropping out of a race is a serious crime.

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I could be off base here but, have they looked at the possibility of a Al-Qaeda connection. Just a thought. Nobody saw 9/11 coming.

[Jolie Rouge]

BP: Effort to plug Gulf oil spill going as planned
By Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer 11 mins ago

:pray

ROBERT, La. – BP started pumping heavy mud into the leaking Gulf of Mexico well Wednesday and said everything was going as planned in the company's boldest attempt yet to plug the gusher that has spewed millions of gallons of oil over the last five weeks.

BP hoped the mud could overpower the steady stream of oil, but chief executive Tony Hayward said it would be at least 24 hours before officials know whether the attempt worked. The company wants to eventually inject cement into the well to seal it.

"I'm sure many of you have been watching the plume," Hayward said of the live video stream of the leak. "All I can say is it is unlikely to give us any real indication of what is going on. Either increases or decreases are not an indicator of either success or failure at this time."

The stakes are high. Fishermen, hotel and restaurant owners, politicians and residents along the coast are fed up with BP's so far ineffective attempts to stop the leak that sprang after an offshore drilling rig exploded April 20. Eleven workers were killed, and by the most conservative estimate, 7 million gallons of crude have spilled into the Gulf, fouling Louisiana's marshes, coating birds and other wildlife and curtailing fishing.

"We're doing everything we can to bring it to closure, and actually we're executing this top kill job as efficiently and effectively as we can," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Wednesday night.

The top kill has worked above ground but has never before been tried 5,000 feet beneath the sea. Company officials peg its chance of success at 60 to 70 percent.

President Barack Obama said "there's no guarantees" it will work. The president planned a trip to Louisiana on Friday.

"We're going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this thing," he said.

Engineers planned to monitor the well overnight and continue pumping in thousands of gallons of the drilling fluid, which is about twice as heavy as water.

"The absence of any news is good news," said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the operation. He added: "It's a wait and see game here right now, so far nothing unfavorable."

Meanwhile, dozens of witness statements obtained by The Associated Press show a combination of equipment failures and a deference to the chain of command impeded the system that should have stopped the gusher before it became an environmental disaster.

The live video stream Wednesday showed pictures of the blowout preventer and oil gushing out. At other times, the feed showed mud spewing out, but BP said this was not cause for alarm.

A weak spot in the blowout preventer could give way under the pressure, causing a brand new leak.

Frustration with BP and the federal government has only grown since efforts to stop the leak have failed.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, both outspoken critics, led a boat tour around the oil-fouled delta near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Some 100 miles of Louisiana coastline had been hit by the oil, the Coast Guard said.

Through the Mississippi's South Pass, there were miles-long passages that showed no indication of oil, and the air smelled fresh and salty. Nearby, fish were leaping and tiny seabirds dove into the water.

But not far away at Pass a Loutre, the oily water smelled like an auto shop.

"There's no wildlife in Pass a Loutre. It's all dead," Nungesser said.

BP has had some success in siphoning oil from a mile-long tube, which has sucked up 924,000 gallons of oil since it was installed last week. Engineers, though, had to move the device during the top kill.

The Coast Guard also said only a small amount of dispersants were used Wednesday in an effort to reduce the chemicals in the Gulf, but crews were continuing the burn and skim the oil off the surface.

Engineers are working on backup plans in case the procedure doesn't work, including a bid to cap the well with a small containment dome. Suttles, for his part, is trying to temper expectations. He said it's too early to express optimism about the top kill.

"It's too hard to say. We've all been here a long time," said Suttles. "We've ridden a roller coaster and we need to take the next 24 hours and see what the results are."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100527/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Ak.BnPydL1KpfEiPQEiHQqip_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

comments

Conspiracy therory .... much


Yeah how about the oil well they sank also?...LET ME CLUE YOU PEOPLE IN ABOUT THE OIL PLATFORM....

1. Owned by South Korea
2. Was attacked on Earth Day
3. Curiously..A South Korean ship was sunk a few weeks earlier.
4. The workers who lived are supposedly on lock down
5. THE RUSSIAN MILITARY SAYS NORTH KOREA TORPEDOED IT!!
6.The Black Box for the oil platform is.....MISSING!

7.And nobody in the mother f'king media will ask the administration one fugging question about it!!

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[Jolie Rouge]

Relief for Gulf is 2 months away with another well
By Mathew Brown, Associated Press Writer 55 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The best hope for stopping the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been compared to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate with a drill more than two miles into the earth, and is anything but a sure bet on the first attempt.

Bid after bid has failed to stanch what has already become the nation's worst-ever spill, and BP PLC is readying another patchwork attempt as early as Wednesday, this one a cut-and-cap process to put a lid on the leaking wellhead so oil can be siphoned to the surface.

But the best-case scenario of sealing the leak is two relief wells being drilled diagonally into the gushing well — tricky business that won't be ready until August.

"The probability of them hitting it on the very first shot is virtually nil," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, who spent most of his 39 years in the oil industry in offshore exploration. "If they get it on the first three or four shots they'd be very lucky."

The relief well drilling and temporary fixes were being watched closely by President Barack Obama, who planned to meet for the first time Tuesday with the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill. A senior administration official said the meeting will take place at the White House. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting had not been formally announced.

For the relief well to succeed, the bore hole must precisely intersect the damaged well. If it misses, BP will have to back up its drill, plug the hole it just created, and try again.

The trial-and-error process could take weeks, but it will eventually work, scientists and BP said. Then engineers will then pump mud and cement through pipes to ultimately seal the well.

As the drilling reaches deeper into the earth, the process is slowed by building pressure and the increasing distance that well casings must travel before they can be set in place.

Still, the three months it could take to finish the relief wells — the first of which started May 2 — is quicker than a typical deep well, which can take four months or longer, said Tad Patzek, chair of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas-Austin. BP already has a good picture of the different layers of sand and rock its drill bits will meet because of the work it did on the blown-out well.

On the slim chance the relief well doesn't work, scientists weren't sure exactly how much — or how long — the oil would flow. The gusher would continue until the well bore hole collapsed or pressure in the reservoir dropped to a point where oil was no longer pushed to the surface, Patzek said.

"I don't admit the possibility of it not working," he said.

A third well could be drilled if the first two fail.

"We don't know how much oil is down there, and hopefully we'll never know when the relief wells work," BP spokesman John Curry said.

The company was starting to collect and analyze data on how much oil might be in the reservoir when the rig exploded April 20, he said.

BP's uncertainty statement is reasonable, given they only had drilled one well, according to Doug Rader, an ocean scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Two relief wells stopped the world's worst peacetime spill, from a Mexican rig called Ixtoc 1 that dumped 140 million gallons off the Yucatan Peninsula. That plug took nearly 10 months beginning in the summer of 1979. Drilling technology has vastly improved since then, however.

So far, the Gulf oil spill has leaked between 19.7 million and 43 million gallons, according to government estimates.

In the meantime, BP is turning to another risky procedure federal officials acknowledge will likely, at least temporarily, cause 20 percent more oil — at least 100,000 gallons a day — to add to the gusher.

Using robot submarines, BP plans to cut away the riser pipe this week and place a cap-like containment valve over the blowout preventer. On Monday, live video feeds showed robot submarines moving equipment around and using a circular saw-like device to cut small pipes at the bottom of the Gulf.

The crews will eventually cut the leaking riser and place the cap on top of it, the company hopes it will capture the majority of the oil, sending it to the surface.

"If you've got to cut that riser, that's risky. You could take a bad situation and make it worse," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences.

BP failed to plug the leak Saturday with its top kill, which shot mud and pieces of rubber into the well but couldn't beat back the pressure of the oil.

Meanwhile, the location of the spill couldn't be worse.

To the south lies an essential spawning ground for imperiled Atlantic bluefin tuna and sperm whales. To the east and west, coral reefs and the coastal fisheries of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. And to the north, Louisiana's coastal marshes.

More than 125 miles of Louisiana coastline already have been hit with oil. "It's just killing us by degrees," said Tulane University ecologist Tom Sherry.

It's an area that historically has been something of a superhighway for hurricanes, too.

If a major storm rolls in, the relief well operations would have to be suspended and then re-started, adding more time to the process. Plugging the Ixtoc was also hampered by hurricane season, which begins Tuesday and is predicted to be very active.

Three of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf coast — Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005 — all passed over the leak site.

On the Gulf coast beaches, tropical weather was far from some tourists' minds.

On Biloxi beach, Paul Dawa and his friend Ezekial Momgeri sipped Coronas after a night gambling at the Hard Rock Casino. Both men, originally from Kenya, drove from Memphis, Tenn., and were chased off the beach by a storm, not oil.

"We talked about it and we decided to come down and see for ourselves" whether there was oil, Momgeri said. "There's no oil here."

Though some tar balls have been found on Mississippi and Alabama barrier islands, oil from the spill has not significantly fouled the shores.

Still, the perception that it has soiled white sands and fishing areas threatens to cripple the tourist economy, said Linda Hornsby, executive director of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association

"It's not here. It may never be here. It's costing a lot of money to counter that perception," Hornsby said. "First it was cancelations, but that evolved to a decrease in calls and there's no way to measure that."

Yet there was fear the oil would eventually hit the other Gulf coast states. Hentzel Yucles, of Gulfport, Miss., hung out on the beach with his wife and sons.

"Katrina was bad. I know this is a different type of situation, but it's going to affect everybody," he said.

Attorney General Eric Holder plans to visit the Gulf Coast on Tuesday and meet with state attorneys general. Several senators have asked the Justice Department to determine whether any laws were broken in the spill.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print

[Jolie Rouge]

More fishing areas closed in Gulf
By NOAA PRESS RELEASE
Published: May 31, 2010 - UPDATED: 5:20 p.m.

http://media.2theadvocate.com/images/053110fishingclosures.jpg
http://media.2theadvocate.com/images/053110fishingclosures.jpg

WASHINGTON - NOAA has extended the northern boundary of the closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico up to the Mississippi federal-state water line and portions of the Alabama federal-state water line – this federal closure does not apply to any state waters.

Closing fishing in these areas is a precautionary measure to ensure that seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers.

The closed area now represents 61,854 square miles, which is slightly less than 26 percent of Gulf of Mexico federal waters. This leaves more than 74 percent of Gulf federal waters available for fishing. The closure will be effective at 5 p.m. CDT May 31. Details can be found at http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/. The last closed area modification was May 25, when 60,683 square miles were closed to fishing, or roughly 25 percent of federal waters of the Gulf.

This extension of the federal fishing closed area due to the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill coincides with the June 1 opening of the Gulf of Mexico recreational red snapper season, and will affect some areas targeted by charter boat captains and private anglers.

However, NOAA’s Fisheries Service is increasing the level of data collection to more closely monitor the effects of the oil spill on Gulf recreational fishing. This will allow the agency to adjust the closure date for recreational fishing seasons as appropriate, including the red snapper season which is scheduled to close at 12:01 a.m. July 24.

“We are communicating regularly with Gulf fishermen about real-time oil spill observations and projections, as well as collecting feedback on what they see while out fishing,” said Roy Crabtree, NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast regional administrator. “We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and we are prepared to extend fishing seasons if we see catches are down, and seafood is safe.”

The federal and state governments have systems in place to test and monitor seafood safety, prohibit harvesting from affected areas, and keep oiled products out of the marketplace. NOAA continues to work closely with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the states to ensure seafood safety, by closing fishing areas where tainted seafood could potentially be caught, and assessing whether seafood is tainted or contaminated to levels that pose a risk to human health. NOAA and FDA are working to implement a broad-scaled seafood sampling plan. The plan includes sampling seafood from inside and outside the closure area, as well as dockside- and market-based sampling.

According to NOAA, there are approximately 5.7 million recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico region who took 25 million fishing trips in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than one billion pounds of fish and shellfish in 2008.

Fishermen who wish to contact BP about a claim should call 800-440-0858.

NOAA will continue to evaluate the need for fisheries closures based on the evolving nature of the spill and will re-open closed areas as appropriate. NOAA will also re-evaluate the closure areas as new information that would change the boundaries of these closed areas becomes available.

NOAA has a number of new methods for the public to obtain information or be notified when there is a change to the closed area:

For information about the response effort, visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/95277364.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Scientists warn of unseen deepwater oil disaster
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer Mon May 31, 5:11 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.

Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC — which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact — said there is "no evidence" that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea.

BP CEO Tony Hayward said the oil naturally gravitates to the surface — and any oil below was just making its way up. However, researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain.

"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.

On the surface, a 24-hour camera fixed on the spewing, blown-out well and the images of dead, oil-soaked birds have been evidence of the calamity. At least 20 million gallons of oil and possibly 43 million gallons have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April.

That has far eclipsed the 11 million gallons released during the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska's coast in 1989. But there is no camera to capture what happens in the rest of the vast Gulf, which sprawls across 600,000 square miles and reaches more than 14,000 feet at its deepest point.

Every night, the denizens of the deep make forays to shallower depths to eat — and be eaten by — other fish, according to marine scientists who describe it as the largest migration on earth.

In turn, several species closest to the surface — including red snapper, shrimp and menhaden — help drive the Gulf Coast fishing industry. Others such as marlin, cobia and yellowfin tuna sit atop the food chain and are chased by the Gulf's charter fishing fleet.

Many of those species are now in their annual spawning seasons. Eggs exposed to oil would quickly perish. Those that survived to hatch could starve if the plankton at the base of the food chain suffer. Larger fish are more resilient, but not immune to the toxic effects of oil.

The Gulf's largest spill was in 1979, when the Ixtoc I platform off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula blew up and released 140 million gallons of oil. But that was in relatively shallow waters — about 160 feet deep — and much of the oil stayed on the surface where it broke down and became less toxic by the time it reached the Texas coast.

But last week, a team from the University of South Florida reported a plume was headed toward the continental shelf off the Alabama coastline, waters thick with fish and other marine life.

The researchers said oil in the plumes had dissolved into the water, possibly a result of chemical dispersants used to break up the spill. That makes it more dangerous to fish larvae and creatures that are filter feeders.

Responding to Hayward's assertion, one researcher noted that scientists from several different universities have come to similar conclusions about the plumes after doing separate testing.

No major fish kills have been reported, but federal officials said the impacts could take years to unfold.

"This is just a giant experiment going on and we're trying to understand scientifically what this means," said Roger Helm, a senior official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2009, LSU's Chakrabarty discovered two new species of bottom-dwelling pancake batfish about 30 miles off the Louisiana coastline — right in line with the pathway of the spill caused when the Deepwater Horizon burned and sank April 24.

By the time an article in the Journal of Fish Biology detailing the discovery appears in the August edition, Chakrabarty said, the two species — which pull themselves along the seafloor with feet-like fins — could be gone or in serious decline.

"There are species out there that haven't been described, and they're going to disappear," he said.

Recent discoveries of endangered sea turtles soaked in oil and 22 dolphins found dead in the spill zone only hint at the scope of a potential calamity that could last years and unravel the Gulf's food web.

Concerns about damage to the fishery already is turning away potential customers for charter boat captains such as Troy Wetzel of Venice. To get to waters unaffected by the spill, Wetzel said he would have to take his boat 100 miles or more into the Gulf — jacking up his fuel costs to where only the wealthiest clients could afford to go fishing.

Significant amounts of crude oil seep naturally from thousands of small rifts in the Gulf's floor — as much as two Exxon Valdez spills every year, according to a 2000 report from government and academic researchers. Microbes that live in the water break down the oil.

The number of microbes that grow in response to the more concentrated BP spill could tip that system out of balance, LSU oceanographer Mark Benfield said.

Too many microbes in the sea could suck oxygen from the water, creating an uninhabitable hypoxic area, or "dead zone."

Preliminary evidence of increased hypoxia in the Gulf was seen during an early May cruise aboard the R/V Pelican, carrying researchers from the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi.

An estimated 910,000 gallons of dispersants — enough to fill more than 100 tanker trucks — are contributing a new toxin to the mix. Containing petroleum distillates and propylene glycol, the dispersants' effects on marine life are still unknown.

What is known is that by breaking down oil into smaller droplets, dispersants reduce the oil's buoyancy, slowing or stalling the crude's rise to the surface and making it harder to track the spill.

Dispersing the oil lower into the water column protects beaches, but also keeps it in cooler waters where oil does not break down as fast. That could prolong the oil's potential to poison fish, said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "There's a school of thought that says we've made it worse because of the dispersants," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_spill_mysteries_of_the_deep/print;_ylt=AoxbTs1F13t2x3sQD0XMFdap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

comments

Thanks to BP and the federal government for killing the fishing, oilfield, tourism, retail industry just to name a few. So what should we plan to do now after 30+ years in an industry? Our government was lax in enforcing safety regulations on BP Deepwater Project. They knew deepwater drilling was dangerous and there should have been more oversight and more safeguards to prevent such a flippin mess. It is the saddest and most depressing for everyone here. Katrina was bad, Rita was bad, Gustav was bad, Ike was bad ... but we could clean up and come back, but this ... is the worst. What the he$$ were they thinking?

---


These aren't the droids you are looking for.


"On Sunday, BP's CEO Tony Hayward disputed the existence of the plumes, saying testing by the company showed no evidence that oil was being suspended in large masses underwater. Hayward said oil's natural tendency is to rise to the surface, and any oil found underwater was in the process of working its way up."

Don't count on BP to tell the truth. They are trying to keep from spending money on cleanup.

---

These @#$%s should not have been allowed to drill at depths that cannot be controlled. They don't give a s#@t! about anything but profits. This is but another failure of government oversight allowed by big oil influence in Washington. Hang the bas@&*ds!

---

Only our grandchildren will know the real dmage done!

[Jolie Rouge]

Scientists warn of unseen deepwater oil disaster
By Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer Mon May 31, 5:11 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.

Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC — which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact — said there is "no evidence" that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea.

BP CEO Tony Hayward said the oil naturally gravitates to the surface — and any oil below was just making its way up. However, researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain.

"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.

On the surface, a 24-hour camera fixed on the spewing, blown-out well and the images of dead, oil-soaked birds have been evidence of the calamity. At least 20 million gallons of oil and possibly 43 million gallons have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April.

That has far eclipsed the 11 million gallons released during the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska's coast in 1989. But there is no camera to capture what happens in the rest of the vast Gulf, which sprawls across 600,000 square miles and reaches more than 14,000 feet at its deepest point.

Every night, the denizens of the deep make forays to shallower depths to eat — and be eaten by — other fish, according to marine scientists who describe it as the largest migration on earth.

In turn, several species closest to the surface — including red snapper, shrimp and menhaden — help drive the Gulf Coast fishing industry. Others such as marlin, cobia and yellowfin tuna sit atop the food chain and are chased by the Gulf's charter fishing fleet.

Many of those species are now in their annual spawning seasons. Eggs exposed to oil would quickly perish. Those that survived to hatch could starve if the plankton at the base of the food chain suffer. Larger fish are more resilient, but not immune to the toxic effects of oil.

The Gulf's largest spill was in 1979, when the Ixtoc I platform off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula blew up and released 140 million gallons of oil. But that was in relatively shallow waters — about 160 feet deep — and much of the oil stayed on the surface where it broke down and became less toxic by the time it reached the Texas coast.

But last week, a team from the University of South Florida reported a plume was headed toward the continental shelf off the Alabama coastline, waters thick with fish and other marine life.

The researchers said oil in the plumes had dissolved into the water, possibly a result of chemical dispersants used to break up the spill. That makes it more dangerous to fish larvae and creatures that are filter feeders.

Responding to Hayward's assertion, one researcher noted that scientists from several different universities have come to similar conclusions about the plumes after doing separate testing.

No major fish kills have been reported, but federal officials said the impacts could take years to unfold.

"This is just a giant experiment going on and we're trying to understand scientifically what this means," said Roger Helm, a senior official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2009, LSU's Chakrabarty discovered two new species of bottom-dwelling pancake batfish about 30 miles off the Louisiana coastline — right in line with the pathway of the spill caused when the Deepwater Horizon burned and sank April 24.

By the time an article in the Journal of Fish Biology detailing the discovery appears in the August edition, Chakrabarty said, the two species — which pull themselves along the seafloor with feet-like fins — could be gone or in serious decline.

"There are species out there that haven't been described, and they're going to disappear," he said.

Recent discoveries of endangered sea turtles soaked in oil and 22 dolphins found dead in the spill zone only hint at the scope of a potential calamity that could last years and unravel the Gulf's food web.

Concerns about damage to the fishery already is turning away potential customers for charter boat captains such as Troy Wetzel of Venice. To get to waters unaffected by the spill, Wetzel said he would have to take his boat 100 miles or more into the Gulf — jacking up his fuel costs to where only the wealthiest clients could afford to go fishing.

Significant amounts of crude oil seep naturally from thousands of small rifts in the Gulf's floor — as much as two Exxon Valdez spills every year, according to a 2000 report from government and academic researchers. Microbes that live in the water break down the oil.

The number of microbes that grow in response to the more concentrated BP spill could tip that system out of balance, LSU oceanographer Mark Benfield said.

Too many microbes in the sea could suck oxygen from the water, creating an uninhabitable hypoxic area, or "dead zone."

Preliminary evidence of increased hypoxia in the Gulf was seen during an early May cruise aboard the R/V Pelican, carrying researchers from the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi.

An estimated 910,000 gallons of dispersants — enough to fill more than 100 tanker trucks — are contributing a new toxin to the mix. Containing petroleum distillates and propylene glycol, the dispersants' effects on marine life are still unknown.

What is known is that by breaking down oil into smaller droplets, dispersants reduce the oil's buoyancy, slowing or stalling the crude's rise to the surface and making it harder to track the spill.

Dispersing the oil lower into the water column protects beaches, but also keeps it in cooler waters where oil does not break down as fast. That could prolong the oil's potential to poison fish, said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "There's a school of thought that says we've made it worse because of the dispersants," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_spill_mysteries_of_the_deep/print;_ylt=AoxbTs1F13t2x3sQD0XMFdap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

comments

Thanks to BP and the federal government for killing the fishing, oilfield, tourism, retail industry just to name a few. So what should we plan to do now after 30+ years in an industry? Our government was lax in enforcing safety regulations on BP Deepwater Project. They knew deepwater drilling was dangerous and there should have been more oversight and more safeguards to prevent such a flippin mess. It is the saddest and most depressing for everyone here. Katrina was bad, Rita was bad, Gustav was bad, Ike was bad ... but we could clean up and come back, but this ... is the worst. What the he$$ were they thinking?

---


These aren't the droids you are looking for.


"On Sunday, BP's CEO Tony Hayward disputed the existence of the plumes, saying testing by the company showed no evidence that oil was being suspended in large masses underwater. Hayward said oil's natural tendency is to rise to the surface, and any oil found underwater was in the process of working its way up."

Don't count on BP to tell the truth. They are trying to keep from spending money on cleanup.

---

These @#$%s should not have been allowed to drill at depths that cannot be controlled. They don't give a s#@t! about anything but profits. This is but another failure of government oversight allowed by big oil influence in Washington. Hang the bas@&*ds!

---

Only our grandchildren will know the real dmage done!

[gmyers]

They were talking about it reaching Alabama by Wednesday of this week on the news. Is that true? Has anybody heard it?

[Jolie Rouge]

Feds meet with film director Cameron on oil spill
AP – FILE - in this April 15, 2010 file photo, director James Cameron, right, and his wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, …
By Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer – 11 mins ago

WASHINGTON – "Top kill" didn't stop the Gulf oil spill. How about something "titanic"?

Federal officials are hoping film director James Cameron can help them come up with ideas on how to stop the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The "Avatar" and "Titanic" director was among a group of scientists and other experts who met Tuesday with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for a brainstorming session on stopping the massive oil leak.

The Canadian-born Cameron is considered an expert on underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. "Avatar" and "Titanic" are the two highest-grossing films of all time.

UPDATED More than 20 scientists, engineers and technical experts attended the meeting, which also included representatives of the Energy Department, Coast Guard and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other organizations represented at the gathering included the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Oceanographic Institute at Harbor Branch, Florida Atlantic University; University of California at Santa Barbara; Nuytco Research Limited; World Wildlife Fund; and the University of California at Berkeley


comments

Good thing this article mentioned him being an expert in underwater photography beause I was just wondering how low our scientific expectations had fallen.
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Typical of politicians. We need something of substance, but instead they bring in Hollywood and put on a good show. If BP can't contain this spill with all their experience and technology, they'll just bring in a cameraman to be sure we get plenty of video evidence for the lawsuits that are sure to follow.
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This just in: Britney Spears to attempt to 'crazy' the leak shut!

Film at 11.
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I'm sure he'll produce a film called Top Kill staring Tom Cruise. It would really be funny if Hollywood could do what BP cant.
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Good idea ask a film director about the leak ? Guess if we can't stop it we can film it !!
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Serious?
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The Feds do know that the Abyss aliens DO NOT EXIST and therefore cannot help, right?
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Just what Cameron needs, an ego boost.
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I'll take all the help we can get.........no matter how far fetched
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Cameron's qualifications? Cameron is considered an expert on underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies, and this makes him the guy to go to?
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His underwater documentary was a technical feat when it was released. It was done with R.O.V.'s and they helped get new technology with his money. Many new species were discovered. Filming was done at depths never filmed before.
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Is it April 1st?
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Whatadoc: What experience or technology are you speaking about? BP botched the Valdez cleanup, allowed a leak from the arctic oilfields to continue flowing into the Arctic Sea for months and LIED to federal regulators about its cleanup capacity before beginning this well. Is their technology lieing? It is what they have experience with.
Cameron is offering to help us get something BP has been blocking for over a month now. We might be able to see what they are (or are not) doing.
At least when Cameron takes on a big job it gets done!
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READ IF YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT SOLVING PROBLEMS AND REAL CHANGE

Water and soil purification

Hemp can be used as a "mop crop" to clear impurities out of wastewater, such as sewage effluent, excessive phosphorus from chicken litter, or other unwanted substances or chemicals. Eco-technologist Dr. Keith Bolton from Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, is a leading researcher in this area. Hemp is being used to clean contaminants at Chernobyl nuclear disaster site.[38]

Fuel

Biofuels such as biodiesel and alcohol fuel can be made from the oils in hemp seeds and stalks, and the fermentation of the plant as a whole, respectively. Biodiesel produced from hemp is sometimes known as hempoline[40].

Henry Ford grew industrial hemp on his estate after 1937,[41] possibly to prove the cheapness of methanol production at Iron Mountain. He made plastic cars (the so-called Hemp Car) with wheat straw, hemp and sisal. (Popular Mechanics, Dec. 1941, "Pinch Hitters for Defense.") Filtered hemp oil can be used directly to power diesels. In 1892, Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine, which he intended to fuel "by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils."

U.S. Senators introduced the BioFuels Security Act in 2006. "It's time for Congress to realize what farmers in America's heartland have known all along - that we have the capacity and ingenuity to decrease our dependence on foreign oil by growing our own fuel," said U.S. Senator for Illinois Barack Obama.[67] The BioFuels Security Act is a proposed legislative Act of Congress intended to phase out current single-fueled vehicles in favor of flexible-fuel vehicles. Under this proposal, contemporary single-fuel vehicles would cease production in 2016. [1]

Some argue that the US government policy of encouraging ethanol from corn is the main cause for food price increases.Corn is used to feed chickens, cows, and pigs. So higher corn prices lead to higher prices for chicken, beef, pork, milk, cheese, etc.

Hemp seeds contain all the essential amino acids and essential fatty acids necessary to maintain healthy human life.[15]

GOD BLESS AMERICA
GOD BLESS HEMP!
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I thought Kevin Costner had already solved this problem.
----

Try an Inflatable Silicon Outside. - Kevlar re-inforced inside "Air Bladder" inside the Pipe. to hold the pressure

place it in uninflated, Inflate it new a strong Joint and Stop this AWFULLLLLLLLL mess.
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well he can't do a worse job......
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Is this a news article or the headline? Where is the rest of the story?
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Maybe they can fix it in front of the "Green Screen". Why can't the Navy do something with their submarine technology?
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Oh - the obama crowd doesn't like it John when you propose something that might help - like the navy - they all just scream - it's not obama's fault - it's not obama's fault - he's just the president - he can't do anything. We know that - he CANNOT AND WILL NOT do anything to help the country. The proof - the majority wants him to step in and help with clean-up or finding other scientists - so he does nothing.
The majority wanted no obama care - so he made sure we got it! Clearly, this....uh..uh..president is our ENEMY.
After seeing the results of the "experts" in the oil business fall flat on their faces, a little "outside the box thinking may be just what we need. If Cameron can make films like that in the conditions he works in, he can probably figure out the "oil" part pretty quick.
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Good God - Wasnt there a plan in place --- just in case this scenerio played out! Unbelievable. I work in a single story office, and there are 3 emergeny evacuation plans in place, yet we let them drill in our one and only ocean, with NO BACK UP PLAN ????? Come on now.
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Until this thing is taken care of, the more ideas the merrier.
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This tells you they are out of ideas. Maybe Ollie Stone and Michael Moore can come in next.

What will work is the relief wells and they won't be doen until August. Until then the gulf becomes one big dirty swimming pool
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They should also check and see if Bill Dance has any ideas. He's big into fishing and is around water a lot. LOL.
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politicians are the cause of this-they were in bed with bp instead of takeing care of the people
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Actually, the underwater filming for the Titanic was considered fairly revolutionary, and deeper depths than the oil.

I think it's fairly sad that our Navy supposedly has state of the art equipment. We spend more each than the next 13 Navies in the world, COMBINED. Yet apparently our nuclear powered subs can only shoot weapons and spy on others.

Why don't we have world class submersibles in NOAA capable of doing things underwater. Our oceans are right here on earth. Why are we spending hundreds of billiions on NASA with their advanced robotics, and so little for earthbound missions.
---\

get paid lot for a 3d imax view of the leak
---


Is that shiny thing down there really the bottom of the barrel?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_en_mo/us_gulf_oil_spill_cameron


I said as much 5/24/10 .... and if they were serious they would get John Ballard, the scientist, oceanographer who was the force behind the exploration of the Titanic ... who inspired and worked with Camereon on the technical aspects of the film. JR

[Jolie Rouge]

BP stock tumbles as feds announce oil-spill probes
By Mike Kunzelman And Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers 14 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP's stock plummeted and took much of the market down with it Tuesday as the federal government announced criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP engineers, meanwhile, tried to recover from a failed attempt to stop the gusher with an effort that will initially make the leak worse.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who was visiting the Gulf to survey the fragile coastline and meet with state and federal prosecutors, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans.

BP's stock nose-dived on Tuesday, losing nearly 15 percent of its value on the first trading day since the previous best option — the so-called "top kill" — failed and was aborted at the government's direction. It dipped steeply with Holder's late-afternoon announcement, which also sent other energy stocks tumbling, ultimately causing the Dow Jones industrial average to tumble 112.

After six weeks of failures to block the well or divert the oil, BP was using robotic machines to carve into the twisted appendages of the crippled well. The latest attempt involved using tools resembling an oversized deli slicer and garden shears to break away the broken riser pipe so engineers can then position a cap over the well's opening.

Even if it succeeds, it will temporarily increase the flow of an already massive leak by 20 percent — at least 100,000 gallons more a day. And it is far from certain that BP will be able to cap a well that one expert compared to an out-of-control fire hydrant.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing — they're using little robots to do this."

The operation has never been performed in such deep water, and is similar to an earlier failed attempt that used a larger cap that quickly froze up. BP PLC officials said they were applying lessons learned from the earlier effort.

"If all goes as planned, within about 24 hours we could have this contained," BP's Doug Suttles said Tuesday after touring a temporary housing facility set up for cleanup workers in Grand Isle. "But we can't guarantee success."

Since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and eventually collapsing into the Gulf of Mexico, an estimated 20 million to 40 million gallons of oil has spewed, eclipsing the 11 million that leaked from the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Oil has fouled many fishing areas and miles of ecologically sensitive coastline. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said oil from the spill was found in his state for the first time, on a barrier island, and newly expanded federal restrictions mean that nearly a third of federal waters are closed to fishing.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday ordered the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor." The commission is led by Bob Graham, a former Florida governor and U.S. senator, and William K. Reilly, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Holder said the laws under review for the criminal and civil probes include the Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act. He said the government would pursue criminal charges "if warranted," a caveat he did not include for civil action.

"We will ensure that every cent, every cent of taxpayer money, will be repaid and that damage to the environment and wildlife will be reimbursed," he said.

Washington lawyer Stan Brand said that two likely criminal law theories the Justice Department would pursue are false statements to the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service and obstruction by failing to produce evidence to investigators.

But Brand and longtime Washington lawyer Stephen Ryan, a former federal prosecutor and ex-congressional investigator, predicted it will be difficult to prove criminality.

"Bad business judgment isn't a crime," said Ryan.

Criminal charges have met with mixed results in two previous high-profile U.S. oil spills.

Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Exxon Valdez supertanker that ran aground off Alaska's coast in 1989, was acquitted of being drunk when the accident occurred, but convicted of a misdemeanor for negligent oil discharge. He was fined $50,000 and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

Hong Kong-based Fleet Management Ltd. paid a $10 million fine after pleading guilty to obstruction charges following a 2007 oil spill after one of the company's cargo ships struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The ship's pilot pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The government would have a lower burden of proof in a civil case. In the Valdez spill, thousands of fishermen, cannery workers, landowners and Native Americans were initially awarded $5 billion in punitive damages, but the amount was eventually reduced to $507.5 million.

BP engineers began putting underwater robots and equipment in place this week after an attempt to plug the well by force-feeding it heavy mud and cement — called a "top kill" — was aborted over the weekend. Crews pumped thousands of gallons of the mud into the well but were unable to overcome the pressure of the oil.

The next plan has BP engineers placing a cap-like containment valve over the well. Not all the gushing oil will be captured through the "cut and cap" method, but the company said it could siphon most of the crude to a vessel on the surface.

Experts warned this effort to siphon the oil could be riskier than earlier attempts because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there is a kink in the pipe.

Eric Smith, an associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, likened the procedure to trying to place a tiny cap on a fire hydrant that's blowing straight up.

"Will they have enough weight to overcome the force of the flow?" he said. "It could create a lot of turbulence, but I do think they'll have enough weight."

BP officials say they have learned valuable lessons from last month's failure of a bigger version of the containment cap that became clogged with icelike slush.

Engineers say they plan to pump warm water through pipes into the smaller dome to prevent any icing problems. And Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said crews have forged two different versions of the cap in case one doesn't fit snugly enough on top of the blowout preventer, the massive device that was supposed to plug the leak.

The dome would be attached to a mile-long tube that siphons the oil and gas to the surface.

Before it can place either cap, the company plans to cut the riser in two different places, keeping it aloft with a crane so it doesn't collapse.

Gigantic shears will cleave off the far end of the riser while a diamond cutter, lowered on top of the blowout preventer early Tuesday, will try to make an even cut through the other end of the tube. A clean cut from the diamond cutter, which resembles a deli slicer, is important because engineers will then lower a heavy cap on top of the sheared-off tube to seal the leak.

BP's best chance to actually plug the leak rests with a pair of relief wells that likely won't be completed until August.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AvgskyqEH2pvcI7Fohvcqtap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


Let's see, a major environmental catastrophe and what does the president do? Does he assemble teams of scientists and engineers and send them to try to find a solution that would expedite the situation and stop the leak? Nope (rhymes with Hope and you all remember that line), he sends Holder, the Attorney General to see how they can start litigation against BP.

I think Mr Obama is a bit mixed up. There's going to be plenty of time for litigation, but then he's a typical lawyer and not a scientific bone in his body.

[pepperpot]

Let's see, a major environmental catastrophe and what does the president do? Does he assemble teams of scientists and engineers and send them to try to find a solution that would expedite the situation and stop the leak? Nope (rhymes with Hope and you all remember that line), he sends Holder, the Attorney General to see how they can start litigation against BP.

I think Mr Obama is a bit mixed up. There's going to be plenty of time for litigation, but then he's a typical lawyer and not a scientific bone in his body.

:agree There's something to be said about the value of experience and priorities......

[Jolie Rouge]

4/30/10 – In ironic twist, BP finalist for pollution prevention award
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/in-ironic-twist-bp-finalist-for-pollution-prevention-award/

5/3/10 – Interior Department Postpones Safety Awards Luncheon That Included BP
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/03/interior-dept-postpones-luncheon-honoring-safety-measures-offshore-oil-gas/

5/4/10 – Obama biggest recipient of BP cash
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64420A20100505

5/17/10 – Resigning MMS regulator gave Transocean a safety award last year
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/05/17/mms_transocean_award


For the latest developments on the oil spill, click here. http://www.memeorandum.com/100601/p11#a100601p11

Ed Morrissey’s also got a must-read on the administration’s efforts to distance themselves from BP just days after President Obama declared that the post-spill containment effort was his responsibility. http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/01/obama-wh-now-distancing-itself-from-bp-response-efforts/

Oh – and the DOJ announced today that it was launching a “criminal and civil investigation” into the oil spill. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/06/us-attorney-general-opens-crim.html

Doesn’t that make you feel much better? As I said on Twitter, I wonder if the Gulf of Mexico will be subpoenaed for testimony? http://twitter.com/sistertoldjah/status/15204626236

[Jolie Rouge]

British Petroleum (BP) rep Randy Prescott recently said, “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp.” His office phone number is (713) 323-4093 and (713) 323-4093. His email is [email protected]. Give him a call or send an email and tell him “BP isn’t the only place that has fuel for my car!” Spread the word!

Kevin Vidrine mentioned something I hadn't considered... England is mostly Muslium now... in my opinion, due to their lack of diligence and backbone. Maybe BP doesn't want to fix the leak, knowing that it's stopping other gulf-drilling... causing us to be more dependent on middle-east oil. :hmmmm2:

[Jolie Rouge]

Effort to contain Gulf oil stalls with stuck saw
By Greg Bluestein And Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writers 9 mins ago

PORT FOURCHON, La. – As the crude crept closer to Florida, the risky effort to contain the nation's worst oil spill hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-edged saw became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the latest attempt to contain — not plug — the gusher. The best chance at stopping the leak is a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

"I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it," Allen said.

If the cut is not as smooth as engineers would like, they would be forced to put a looser fitting cap on top of the oil spewing out. This cut-and-cap effort could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said officials wouldn't know whether that had happened until the cut could be completed.

Engineers may have to bring in a second saw awaiting on a boat, but it was not immediately clear how long that could delay the operation. Live video showed oil spewing out of the new cut, and crews were shooting chemicals to try to disperse the crude. The cap could be placed over the spill as early as Wednesday.

The effort underwater was going on as oil drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time and investors ran from BP's stock for a second day, reacting to the company's weekend failure to plug the leak by shooting mud and cement into the well, known as the top kill.

The Justice Department also has announced it started criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said in prepared remarks that it was time to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development. He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil.

Shares in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.

In Florida, oil was about seven miles south of Pensacola beach, Allen said.

Thunderstorms were making it difficult to track the slick, Escambia County emergency director John Dosh said, and officials hoped the weather would clear so they could get an aerial view.

It was raining and cloudy at the beach off and on. The four pirate flags on top of Peg Leg Pete's Oyster Bar on the beach where flapping eastward, which could send the oil closer to shore. Peg Leg Pete's is a beach institution frequented by boaters who pull up behind the restaurant in a cove off Pensacola Bay.

It was a slow Memorial Day weekend. Hundreds of tourists enjoyed the turquoise waters, but it wasn't as busy as usual.

"We are looking at a Wednesday to Friday shoreline impact, but there is a line of uncertainty that depends on the wave action and the winds," Dosh said.

"Today we are in a monitoring mode."

Emergency crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom, though choppy waters from thunderstorms could send the oil over the protective lines. County officials are using the boom to block oil from reaching inland waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected because they are easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.

Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, said the threat of oil hitting the coast was shifting east and skimmer vessels would be working offshore to intercept as much crude as possible.

Earlier this week, BP officials said they were concentrating cleanup efforts in Louisiana because they did not expect oil to reach other states. The company has set up floating hotels on barges to house cleanup crews closer to the Louisiana shores.

In Venice, La., hundreds of oil response workers were grounded by storms and many local fishermen hired in the so-called vessels of opportunity program were sent home early. Venice is a major staging center for the oil response, with nearly 1,500 workers and dozens of boats in this small town in the marshes.

"Boats were staged and ready to go" in case there was a break in the weather, said BP spokesman Mike Abendoff.

Some work continued, including at a 32-acre site where an "employee village" is being built to eventually house as many as 1,500 workers in trailers. Abendoff hoped to start putting some workers there by early next week.

More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a similar situation.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53, said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help. "Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some of the flow.

___

Bluestein reported from Covington, La. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville and Pete Yost from Washington, Curt Anderson from Miami, Kevin McGill in Schriever, Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla., Brian Skoloff in Port Fourchon, Mary Foster in Boothville, and Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans also contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AvgskyqEH2pvcI7Fohvcqtap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[pepperpot]

This is just getting more tragic by the minute...:(

[Jolie Rouge]

oops

[Jolie Rouge]

BP exec sorry for saying: 'I'd like my life back'
By Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 2, 5:30 pm ET

COVINGTON, La. – BP chief executive Tony Hayward is apologizing for saying "I'd like my life back" to reporters over the weekend.

Hayward said in a statement posted on the company's Facebook site Wednesday that the remark was hurtful and thoughtless. He apologized to the community and the families of the 11 men who were killed in the April 20 rig explosion.

Hayward said "those words don't represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don't represent the hearts of the people of BP — many of whom live and work in the Gulf — who are doing everything they can to make things right."

Hayward says his top priority is to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100602/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_ceo_apology/print;_ylt=AvgskyqEH2pvcI7Fohvcqtap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


I'm sure the people who died on his rig would like their lives back also!

I'm sure the fishermen and the shrimpers and all the people who make a living off the Gulf Coast would like their lives back...

I'm sure all the wildlife being affected would like their lives back ....

He has proven where his own selfish heart is...

[gmyers]

Did anybody hear that BP might have another oil rig that could be in danger? My husband heard it on CNN today.

[Jolie Rouge]

Unbelievable ! The boats simply sat and watched the oil creep into the bays ... and unbelievable that the MSM has not broadcast this far and wide....


Cleanup boats delayed over lack of authority
By SANDY DAVIS Advocate staff writer
Published: May 25, 2010 - Page: 1A

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/94847639.html

fleet of boats under BP’s control sat idle this weekend as Jefferson Parish officials begged for the company’s help when a thick brown slick of oil threatened to enter two passes leading into Barataria Bay.

BP officials in Grand Isle told Chris Roberts, a Jefferson Parish councilman, and other parish and city officials they did not have the authority to order the boats into action.

“They said they were waiting for some direction from their people in Houma,” Roberts said. “But they never got it.”

The fleet of nearly 50 boats is part of BP’s Vessels of Opportunity program — created to help with the company’s massive oil leak about 50 miles offshore — and there is skimming and boom equipment on board, Roberts said.

But on Friday and Saturday the boats were docked in Grand Isle, Roberts said.

The oil was first discovered heading toward Coup Abel and Four Bayou Passes, both of which lead into Barataria Bay, late Friday during a flight over the area, Roberts said.

“We reported that to BP Friday night, we gave them the coordinates and told them our concerns,” Roberts said. “We told them they needed to position the boats to keep the oil from coming in the passes.”

But the boats never moved, Roberts said.

Finally between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Saturday, parish and city officials decided they could not wait any longer.

“We commandeered the boats and brought them out to the area where they needed to be and got things moving,” Roberts said.

But the oil had already swept through the passes, Roberts said, and into Barataria Bay, which Roberts said flows from Jean Lafitte to Grand Isle. “Had the boats been working, they would have been able to prevent some of this oil from coming in,” Roberts said.

Now the oil is encroaching on Jean Lafitte, he said, including estuaries and oyster and shrimp harvesting areas. “The oil is hitting areas that are the worse possible places it could be,” he said.

Roberts said he is frustrated and angry that BP officials on the “front lines did not have the ability to make decisions.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal echoed that opinion on Monday when he met with Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Ken Salazar, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. “We’ve been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little too late to stop the oil from hitting our coast,” Jindal said during a news conference in Port Fourchon.

To avoid another incident like what happened in Barataria Bay, Jindal said he asked for U.S. Coast Guard officials with decision-making abilities to be deployed to every basin area so that a quick response can be made when oil is spotted. “And not wait 24 hours or 48 hours,” Jindal said.

The governor said he was also frustrated that equipment needed for the containment and cleanup of the oil is not available in the state. “Boom, skimmers, vacuums, and jack up barges are all in short supply,” he said. “Every day oil sits and waits for cleanup, more of our marsh dies.”

Jindal said he visited Cat Island in Plaquemines Parish Sunday and “we saw islands covered in oil where our brown pelican’s nest.”

There were oiled birds, some of which had so much oil on them, they couldn’t fly, Jindal said. “The oil on those islands yesterday may kill off much of the islands,” he added, beyond killing the birds.

Jay Holcomb, director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, who is working at the bird rescue center at Fort Jackson, said since the oil moved on shore last week, there has been an increase in birds that have been oiled. “But we’re having a very difficult time catching them,” he said. “Even though they’re covered in oil, they can still fly.”

He said officials with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services is trying to come up with a better strategy to catch the birds so they can be cleaned. “Birds are still trickling in here,” he said of the Fort Jackson bird rescue center.

About 70 miles of the state’s coastline has been impacted by the crude oil that began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people, and then collapsed into the gulf two days later.

Since then, oil is leaking from a pipe — that connected the rig to the well head — but broke when the rig collapsed.

On Monday, Lisa Jackson, administrator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said that BP is close to “holding the world record” for using the most dispersants.

It is also the first time in the United States that dispersants have been used 5,000-feet below the gulf’s surface where the leak is located.

Jackson said that last week BP was told to identify other dispersants it could use that are effective but less toxic than Corexit, the kind it is currently using.

She took the company to task Monday when she announced BP came up with no alternatives. “We are not satisfied with BP’s response,” she said.

As a result, Jackson said she ordered BP to “ramp down all use of dispersants,” including use of the chemicals on the water’s surface as well as 5,000 feet below the water’s surface.

She said that she expects to see a 50 percent to 70 percent reduction in the use of dispersants. Jackson said the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the federal response, is responsible for making sure that BP follows the order.

EPA tests have shown that there has been little impact on marine life from the use of the dispersant at the well head, Jackson said. “But we’re still concerned about what we don’t know,” she said, adding there is virtually “no science” available on the use of dispersants in deepwater or in the volume in which they’ve been used.

In the meantime, BP said it plans to try and close off the leaking well using a “top kill” method on Wednesday morning.

In a “top kill,” heavy drilling fluids known as mud will be shot at a high rate of velocity into the blowout preventer — which sits on top of the well head — with the hope of plugging up the well, said Doug Suttles, the company’s chief operating officer. Once the well is plugged, cement will be put in it to seal it.

By late Wednesday, the company should know whether the method was successful, Suttles said.

And amid growing criticism against BP, Suttles said he didn’t think anyone else, including the federal government, could have done much better if they had been in charge of the oil leak. “We are the biggest deepwater oil producer in the world and we have more capability than anyone else in the world,” Suttles said. “I don’t know what else we could have done.”

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf spill workers complaining of flulike symptoms
Noaki Schwartz And Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writers – Thu Jun 3, 5:50 am ET

NEW ORLEANS – For days now, Dr. Damon Dietrich has seen patients come through his emergency room at West Jefferson Medical Center with similar symptoms: respiratory problems, headaches and nausea.

In the past week, 11 workers who have been out on the water cleaning up oil from BP's blown-out well have been treated for what Dietrich calls "a pattern of symptoms" that could have been caused by the burning of crude oil, noxious fumes from the oil or the dispersants dumped in the Gulf to break it up. All workers were treated and released. "One person comes in, it could be multiple things," he said. "Eleven people come in with these symptoms, it makes it incredibly suspicious."

Few studies have examined long-term health effects of oil exposure. But some of the workers trolling Gulf Coast beaches and heading out into the marshes and waters have complained about flu-like symptoms — a similar complaint among crews deployed for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

BP and U.S. Coast Guard officials have said dehydration, heat, food poisoning or other unrelated factors may have caused the workers' symptoms. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is investigating.

Brief contact with small amounts of light crude oil and dispersants are not harmful. Swallowing small amounts of oil can cause upset stomach, vomiting and diarrhea. Long-term exposure to dispersants, however, can cause central nervous system problems, or do damage to blood, kidneys or livers, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.

In the six weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers, an estimated 21 million to 45 million gallons of crude has poured into the Gulf of Mexico. Hundreds of BP contractors have fanned out along the Gulf, deploying boom, spraying chemicals to break up the oil, picking up oil-soaked debris and trying to keep the creeping slick out of the sensitive marshes and away from the tourist-Mecca beaches.

Commercial fisherman John Wunstell Jr. spent a night on a vessel near the source of the spill and left complaining of a severe headache, upset stomach and nose bleed. He was treated at the hospital, and sued — becoming part of a class-action lawsuit filed last month in U.S. District Court in New Orleans against BP, Transocean and their insurers.

Wunstell, who was part of a crew burning oil, believes planes were spraying dispersant in the middle of the night — something BP disputes.

"I began to ache all over ..." he said in the affidavit. "I was completely unable to function at this point and feared that I was seriously ill."

Dozens of complaints, most from spill workers, have been made related to oil exposure with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said spokeswoman Olivia Watkins, as well as with the Louisiana Poison Center, clinics and hospitals. Workers are being told to follow federal guidelines that recommend anyone involved in oil spill cleanup wear protective equipment such as gloves, safety glasses and clothing.

Michael J. Schneider, an attorney who decided against filing a class-action lawsuit in the 1990s involving the Valdez workers, said proving a link between oil exposure and health problems is very difficult.

"As a human being you listen to enough and you've got to believe they're true," he said. "The problem is the science may not be there to support them ... Many of the signs and symptoms these people complained of are explainable for a dozen different reasons — it's certainly coincidental they all shared a reason in common."

Similar to the Valdez cleanup, there have been concerns in the Gulf that workers aren't being supplied with enough protective gear. Workers have been spotted in white jumpsuits, gloves and booties but no goggles or respirators.

"If they're out there getting lightheaded and dizzy every day then obviously they ought to come in, and there should be respirators and other equipment provided," said LuAnn White, director of the Tulane Center for Applied Environmental Public Health. She added that most of the volatile components that could sicken people generally evaporate before the oil reaches shore.

BP PLC's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said reports of workers getting sick are being investigated but noted that no one has pinpointed the cause. Suttles said workers were being given "any safety equipment" needed to do their jobs safely.

Unlike with Exxon Valdez, in the Gulf, the oil has been lighter, the temperatures warm and humid, and there have been hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals used to break up the oil.

Court records showed more than 6,700 workers involved in the Exxon Valdez clean up suffered respiratory problems which the company attributed to a viral illness, not chemical poisoning.

Dennis Mestas represented the only known worker to successfully settle with Exxon over health issues. According to the terms of that confidential settlement, Exxon did not admit fault.

His client, Gary Stubblefield, spent four months lifting workers in a crane for 18 hours a day as they sprayed the oil-slicked beaches with hot water, which created an oily mist. Even though he had to wipe clean his windshield twice a day, Stubblefield said it never occurred to him that the mixture might be harming his lungs.

Within weeks, he and others, who wore little to no protective gear, were coughing and experiencing other symptoms that were eventually nicknamed Valdez crud. Now 60, Stubblefield cannot get through a short conversation without coughing and gasping for breath like a drowning man. He sometimes needs the help of a breathing machine and inhalers, and has to be careful not to choke when he drinks and eats.

Watching the Gulf situation unfold, he says, makes him sick.

"I just watch this stuff everyday and know these people are on the very first rung on the ladder and are going to go through a lot of misery," said Stubblefield, who now lives in Prescott, Ariz.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_re_us/us_oil_spill_workers_health

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill as a lesson on humans in nature
The Monitor's Editorial Board – Wed Jun 2, 3:18 pm ET

Some eco-disasters are so huge they force humans to rethink how to better coexist with nature on a delicate planet. The mass killing of birds by the pesticide DDT, for instance, helped trigger the 1960s environmental movement.

Now the Gulf oil spill may be one of those moments for mass reflection.

Millions of barrels of crude oil have entered the aquatic food chain since BP’s rig collapsed April 20. The spill itself is bad enough, but every day people from Florida to Texas are being forced to make difficult choices that pit the interests of humans against those of wildlife.

A few examples of this sudden triage:

Should the limited number of plastic water booms be used to protect certain endangered birds in marshes or the hatchery areas for shrimp, thus helping shrimp fisherman?

Should chemical dispersants be used to keep the oil from reaching tourist beaches even though that might then leave the oil stuck in the Gulf’s depths, creating oxygen-free “dead zones” for decades?

Should government build sand barriers to protect shorelines near coastal homes or to wall off the nesting grounds of species such as Kemp’s ridley turtles and the brown pelican?

One of the hardest questions is this: Will this finally spur us to cut oil consumption after witnessing one of the biggest environmental disasters in history?

This spill should serve as a catalyst for making difficult trade-offs and resetting priorities so as to rebalance the needs of humans and nature. This is a far more constructive exercise than wallowing in anger at BP’s mistakes or the government’s halting response to the crisis.

“We all need to take a hard look at how we’re living,” Larry Schweiger, head of he National Wildlife Federation, told the Associated Press.

Little in nature today remains untrammeled by human activity. Much of North America, for instance, was altered by native people long before whites arrived in 1492 – forests were burned and large mammal species were killed off. Defining what is truly wild or pristine is too difficult to return to an idealized sense of natural paradise. Even concepts of a sustainable use of resources are difficult as they rely on estimating the impact over centuries.

The task of sharing the land, air, and water with other species (and there are 8,300 species in the Gulf of Mexico) requires constantly redefining the proper place for humans in nature. It’s not as easy as simply walling off certain areas for protection or reducing consumption of resources. A more fundamental discussion is needed about values – a higher regard for life, a concern for future generations, an awe for the wonders of creation.

If any good is to come of the Gulf oil spill, it is to use the crisis to look deeper into the human reality on this planet. Only then might “mistakes” like an oil spill be avoided.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100602/cm_csm/305521;_ylt=AoZV8q_UxmqHaGQnwUGjNbCs0NUE;_ylu=X3oD MTFlaTY5ZHZiBHBvcwMyMTYEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9vcGluaW 9uBHNsawNndWxmb2lsc3BpbGw-

[gmyers]

I heard a while ago they finally got the pipe cut and were going to try to cap iy now. I hope it works.

[Jolie Rouge]

I heard a while ago they finally got the pipe cut and were going to try to cap iy now. I hope it works.

From your lips to God's ears ....



BP CEO: 'We will be here for a very long time'
Paul J. Weber, Associated Press Writer – 4 mins ago

HOUSTON – BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward says the company should know in 12 to 24 hours whether its latest effort will contain the Gulf oil spill, though he conceded the attempt is risky.

Hayward said Thursday that the risk had been reduced after a major pipe was cut away earlier in the day. Government officials have warned that cutting away the pipe could, at least temporarily, increase the flow of oil by 20 percent.

Hayward says the company will be on the Gulf coast for a long time cleaning up the spill and will continue until every drop of oil is recovered.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

METAIRIE, La. (AP) — BP sliced off a pipe with giant shears Thursday in the latest bid to curtail the worst spill in U.S. history, but the cut was jagged and placing a cap over the gusher will now be more challenging.

BP turned to the shears after a diamond-tipped saw became stuck in the pipe halfway through the job, yet another frustrating delay in the six-week-old Gulf of Mexico spill.

The cap will be lowered and sealed over the next couple of hours, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster. It won't be known how much oil BP can siphon to a tanker on the surface until the cap is fitted, but the irregular cut means it won't fit as snugly as officials hoped.

"We'll have to see when we get the containment cap on it just how effective it is," Allen said. "It will be a test and adapt phase as we move ahead, but it's a significant step forward."

Even if it works, BP engineers expect oil to continue leaking into the ocean.

The next chance to stop the flow won't come until two relief wells meant to plug the reservoir for good are finished in August.

This latest attempt to control the spill, the so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser removed a kink in the pipe, and could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.

Live video footage showed oil spewing uninterrupted out of the top of the blowout preventer, but Allen said it was unclear whether the flow had increased.

"I don't think we'll know until the containment cap is seated on there," he said. "We'll have to wait and see."

President Barack Obama will return to the Louisiana coast Friday to assess the latest efforts, his third trip to the region since the April 20 disaster. It's also his second visit in a week.

BP's top executive acknowledged Thursday the global oil giant was unprepared to fight a catastrophic deepwater oil spill. Chief executive Tony Hayward told The Financial Times it was "an entirely fair criticism" to say the company had not been fully prepared for a deepwater oil leak. Hayward called it "low-probability, high-impact" accident.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit," Hayward said in an interview published in Thursday's edition of the London-based newspaper.

Oil drifted six miles from the Florida Panhandle's popular sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe.

The Coast Guard's Allen directed BP to pay for five additional sand barrier projects in Louisiana. BP said Thursday the project will cost it about $360 million, on top of about $990 million it had spent on response and clean up, grants to four Gulf coast states and claims from people and companies hurt by the spill.

Mark Johnecheck, a 68-year-old retired Navy captain from Pensacola, sat on a black folding chair as rough surf crashed ashore at Pensacola Beach and children splashed in the water. Johnecheck has lived in the Pensacola area since the 1960s, but doesn't come to the beach very often.

"The reason I'm here now is because I'm afraid it's going to be gone," he said. "I'm really afraid that the next time I come out here it's not going to look like this."

He said the arrival of the oil seems foregone: "I don't know what else they can do," he said. "It just makes you feel helpless."

His wife walks up and becomes emotional thinking about the oil. "It's like grieving somebody on their dying bed," said Marjorie Johnecheck, 62.

Next to her chair is a small white pail full of sugary Panhandle sand. She will take it home and put it in a decorative jar.

"I'm taking it home before it gets black," she said.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.

Anne Wilson, a 62-year-old retired teachers aide who has lived in Pensacola Beach for the last year and a half, felt helpless.

"There's nothing more you can do," said Wilson, who lived in Valdez, Alaska, near the Exxon spill in 1989. "It's up to Mother Nature to take care of things. Humans can only do so much."

Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers — particularly those from overseas — how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.

The effect on wildlife has grown, too.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

Dead birds and animals found during spills are kept as evidence in locked freezers until investigations and damage assessments are complete, according to Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This includes strict chain-of-custody procedures and long-term locked storage until the investigative and damage assessment phases of the spill are complete," she wrote in an e-mail.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AvbWNuxC3Hukc4wZRf5xm2Gs0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTNoOHJxMnNlBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNjAzL3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb 3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9 yeQRzbGsDYnBjZW93ZXdpbGxi

[gmyers]

Everybody they talk to seems so sad and depressed about this spill. I feel the same way. I really hope that they can do something where everything wont be destroyed. It was so pretty and now I hope it'll be again. I feel for the people that live near it and the ones that depend on it for their living. They've got to be scared right now.

[Jolie Rouge]

Giuliani on the Oil Spill Response[i]
http://dougpowers.com/2010/06/03/giuliani-on-the-oil-spill-response/Giuliani+on+the+Oil+Spill+Response2010-06-03+13%3A37%3A23Doug+Powers

Rudy Giuliani was on Hannity last night and had a good point after being asked about the Obama administration’s response to the oil spill:


It couldn’t be worse. This would be an example if you taught Leadership 101 of Exactly NOT what to do. Minimize it at first. Two days after or three days after it happened, go on vacation. He’s been on vacation more often than by far he’s been to Louisiana… The reality is the Administration has made every mistake it could possibly make right down to the criminal investigation of BP… And, if they’re being criminally investigated then why are we allowing them to do it? If we got a bunch of criminals doing it then why are we allowing them to do it?

Think of a bank that was robbed and trashed. The police suspect it was somebody who works a the bank, and they’re in the midst of investigating — but until the investigation is complete they’re letting the suspect keep the keys to the bank and the safe so he can go in there alone every night and try to clean up the mess that was made.

No, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s the government.

Update: Director James Cameron’s offer to help plug the leak has been declined. So much for getting footage for the opening credits of “Titanic II: Deepwater Horizon.”

And now every Richie Rich, Lex Luthor and Buckaroo Bonzai is coming out of the woodwork to offer their two cents about what THEY would have done had they been consulted. It's like being an investment consultant, everyone knows more about what you do for a living than you do.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100603/en_nm/us_oil_...

A guy makes a movie underwater and suddenly HE is the expert on capping deep oil wells. Talk about hubrus. It's not like he brings any new technology or expertise to the situation, just ego and a need to be the center of attention.

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama Sorta Blames GOP For Oil Spill

When it comes down to it, the blame games is just about all the Obama administration has. When a person with virtually no private sector nor executive experience surrounds himself with people who have spent barely any time, if any at all, outside of academia or politics, what you end up with is a group that was great on the campaign trail, but flailing and clueless when actually in charge. Gee, if only people told us this would happen: Obama Points a Finger at GOP http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703561604575282593380918512.html


President Barack Obama, facing political heat from both right and left over his response to the Gulf oil spill, blasted Republicans on Wednesday for what he said was a loosening of regulations on industry at the public’s expense.

Mr. Obama did not blame the GOP for the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. But he attacked what he said was a Republican philosophy in the past decade that had “gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.”

Typically, Mr. Obama confines his most partisan attacks to Democratic fund-raisers. At one such event last week, he said Republicans were like a teenager who had driven the family car into a ditch and were now demanding the car keys back.

But Wednesday’s comments came in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in which Mr. Obama also drew attention to the Gulf spill

So, Mr. Post-Partisan new way of doing business in Washington is now using official presidential appearances to play the blame game. Wait, didn’t he say, multiple times, that he was in charge, that the buck stopped with him? True, he does say quite a few things that we could charitably call “lies.” Perhaps someone should point out that Democrats held the House since 2007, and held the Senate for half of the past decade.

Eh. Facts. Who needs them?



Humorously, Eric Cantor throws a Democrat talking point right back at President Thin Skin


Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the House Republican whip, replied that blaming Republicans would not solve the country’s problems. “The same old politics that the president has been prone to engage in—like castigating opponents and mocking those who disagree with his policies—are not solving America’s biggest problems,” Mr. Cantor said in a statement.

Heh.


Also Wednesday, a White House official said that conversations are under way about delaying or canceling Mr. Obama’s planned trip to Indonesia and Australia this month, already postponed once. The trip remains on the schedule, but officials are clearly nervous about the prospect of the president traveling overseas as oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and beyond.

A real leader would have simply canceled the trip, certainly the Indonesian portion, which is more about personal reflection for the place Obama partially grew up in. But, does anyone think Obama really wants to miss a free trip to those two places? The perks of the job seem to be more important than doing the job.

http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2010/06/03/obama-sorta-blames-gop-for-oil-spill/

[Jolie Rouge]

NBC anchor to Obama: ‘That ain’t the way this is going to play out.’
Posted by Caleb Howe Thursday, June 3rd at 1:30PM EDT

http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2010/06/03/nbc-anchor-to-obama-that-aint-the-way-this-is-going-to-play-out/

Via Ed Morrissey: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/03/nbc-anchor-cameras-are-the-only-reason-youre-responding-champ/


I got a kick out of President Obama saying that even when the cameras go away we’ll still be there for you. That ain’t the way this is going to play out. If anything, the cameras being here have compelled outside interests – government, BP – to kick this into another gear. With all due respect, the President might have had his scenario off by 180 degrees.

This is a really great interview by Mediaite’s Steve Krakauer. Williams is unguarded and open. As Ed notes, it’s premature to conclude that Obama has ‘lost BriWi’ as Krakauer put it, but it’s a telling commentary on the administration’s handling of the spill nevertheless. When the bottom line from a MSM anchor is that your Democratic administration is only interested in an environmental catastrophe involving the dreaded BIG OIL!!! when the camera is rolling … yeah. You’re messing up.

Williams’ “Daily Nightly” blog is celebrating its 5-year anniversary. He’s giving an interview to a website via blogtalkradio. Yet another example of how the internet and the blogs in particular can get candid commentary the public might not otherwise ever hear.

[Jolie Rouge]

Tarball encounters at beach no health hazard
Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer – 10 mins ago

ATLANTA – Oil has now washed up on the beaches of three Gulf states. How dangerous is it?

Not very, experts say.

People should of course stay away from oil on the beach or in the water, but swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tarball is not considered grounds for a trip to the emergency room, health officials say. "Limited contact is not something that needs to be treated by a physician," said Doc Kokol, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health.

It's been six weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers and pouring an estimated 21 million gallons to 45 million gallons of crude oil has poured into the Gulf of Mexico. Oil has hit beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And it lurks off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.

Poison control centers have had about 45 calls from people saying they think they got sick from oil spill exposure.

It helps that the spill involves a type of oil called medium sweet crude. It's considered less hazardous than other forms because it contains fewer toxic sulfur compounds and fewer chemicals that enter the air easily, according to the CDC.

If oil gets on bare skin, people should wash it off as soon as they can, and call the local poison control center if a rash or other problem develops, the CDC advises.

Soap and water, or perhaps baby oil, is the best way to get oil off your skin. Avoid using kerosene or gasoline.

For years bits of tar have shown up on some beaches along the Gulf because of tanker and rig spills and oil seepage from beneath the sea that washes up. Some condominiums, especially in Texas, keep handy tar-remover towelettes for visitors.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100603/ap_on_he_me/us_med_oil_spill_beach_advice;_ylt=Anv23iv1ovE8u_o WMeuPEu6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFkYm83djViBHBvcwMxNDgEc2V jA2FjY29yZGlvbl9oZWFsdGgEc2xrA3RhcmJhbGxlbmNvdQ--

Online: CDC oil spill page: http://emergency.cdc.gov/chemical/oil_spill_gm_2010.asp

American Association of Poison Control Centers: http://www.aapcc.org/DNN/


Government doctors say...Our pals at BP say its all fine, don't even worry about it, it will make you look more tan, whats a little carcinogen among friend?

---

So, the story is....it isn't harmful but wash it off as quickly as possible.



June 3, 2010 05:57 AM
Oil begins hitting Alabama's Dauphin Island

Teams of workers in protective boots and gloves scoured Alabama's Dauphin Island on Wednesday for washed up tar balls and tar patties that have put the 14-mile-long resort in the front line of the state's fight against the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The invading oil debris, heralding the arrival on Alabama's coast of parts of the huge, fragmented oil slick spewing from BP's blown-out undersea well, started coming ashore late on Tuesday on the inhabited barrier beach island.

Dauphin Island residents, who are used to hurricanes roaring out of the Gulf, were waking up to the reality that they would not escape the impact of the six-week-old spill which had so far mostly affected Louisiana to the southwest.

"It's something we'd rather not have happen, but we all knew the possibility was there, and the island, as a people, are very resilient. We will find a way to work through this process," Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said.

The tar blobs and patties, which ranged in size from golf balls to the size of a fist, were scattered along the shoreline and could also be seen bobbing in the water. "They're very gooey," Collier said.

He said the island's lifestyle, environment and economy had already been hit, the latter through visitors' cancellations.

The cleanup workers collected the oil debris in plastic bags and shoveled up sand fouled with an oily sheen. Scores of fishing boats contracted to the oil containment effort set out to lay protective boom around the island.

As they watched TV images showing the spilled oil clogging Louisiana wetlands to the southwest, residents had been hoping that winds and currents might keep the crude from their shore. Instead, winds pushed the slick toward Alabama this week.

"It is so depressing. It is really happening. It really won't go away. And the American people really don't know what has hit them," said Caroline Graves, who has a vacation home on the island.



Oil arrival puts Alabama island on spill frontline
Verna Gates and Kelli Dugan DAUPHIN ISLAND Wed Jun 2, 2010

DAUPHIN ISLAND Alabama (Reuters) - Teams of workers in protective boots and gloves scoured Alabama's Dauphin Island on Wednesday for washed up tar balls and tar patties that have put the 14-mile-long resort in the front line of the state's fight against the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The invading oil debris, heralding the arrival on Alabama's coast of parts of the huge, fragmented oil slick spewing from BP's blown-out undersea well, started coming ashore late on Tuesday on the inhabited barrier beach island.

Dauphin Island residents, who are used to hurricanes roaring out of the Gulf, were waking up to the reality that they would not escape the impact of the six-week-old spill which had so far mostly affected Louisiana to the southwest. "It's something we'd rather not have happen, but we all knew the possibility was there, and the island, as a people, are very resilient. We will find a way to work through this process," Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said.

The tar blobs and patties, which ranged in size from golf balls to the size of a fist, were scattered along the shoreline and could also be seen bobbing in the water. "They're very gooey," Collier said.

He said the island's lifestyle, environment and economy had already been hit, the latter through visitors' cancellations.

The cleanup workers collected the oil debris in plastic bags and shoveled up sand fouled with an oily sheen. Scores of fishing boats contracted to the oil containment effort set out to lay protective boom around the island.

As they watched TV images showing the spilled oil clogging Louisiana wetlands to the southwest, residents had been hoping that winds and currents might keep the crude from their shore. Instead, winds pushed the slick toward Alabama this week. "It is so depressing. It is really happening. It really won't go away. And the American people really don't know what has hit them," said Caroline Graves, who has a vacation home on the island.

On May 8, scattered tar balls had washed up from the Gulf onto the island's main beach, but were quickly collected.

Alabama authorities on Tuesday closed state oyster beds, suspended local fishing and discouraged swimming on Dauphin Island due to the presence of the oil.

Federal authorities have closed around 31 percent of U.S. Gulf waters to fishing. The major tourist area of northwest Florida has up to now remained clean of oil.

FLORIDA PANHANDLE ON ALERT

That could change soon because a segment of the oil slick is floating closer to the Florida Panhandle coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist told reporters his state is prepared to respond. "We understand what is happening and are doing everything we can to protect our beautiful state".

He said oil-collecting boom had already been deployed offshore and more was being readied to keep off the crude which could hit the northwest Florida shoreline as early as Friday.

In addition, skimming vessels have been dispatched to collect oil and tar balls that are now within 10 miles of the state shoreline.

Crist said Florida has also launched a massive advertising campaign, backed in part by $25 million provided by BP, aimed at keeping visitors coming to the Sunshine State, which has a $65 billion-a-year tourism industry.

On Alabama's Dauphin Island, which has 1,300 year-round residents and tens of thousands of annual visitors, the arriving oil spelled immediate danger for wildlife and fish.

At least one tern, an endangered bird species, fished in the oily water and a blue heron stood in the sea with dark oil coating its thin legs.

Tuesday was also the start of the official red snapper season, now impacted by the oil emergency. "I told my kids: 'Tell your grandkids you ate the last two snappers from the Gulf,'" said Donna Jones, a visitor from Stateline, Mississippi.

Dauphin Island, accessible via a long bridge from the mainland, has four churches, a post office and a few shops and most of its sea-facing houses are built on stilts for protection against a different annual threat: hurricanes.

But some fear the invading oil will be worse than any hurricane. "The Gulf is dead," said Darlene Stewart, a tourist from Pensacola, Florida, expressing fear of massive pollution.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6516I220100602

[Jolie Rouge]

Or as Ed Morrissey puts it, “NBC anchor: Cameras are the only reason you’re responding, champ,” paraphrasing this Brian Williams interview with Mediate:

Williams: …The night the rig exploded I went on the air, it was our lead story. I asked the question, ‘is this going to lead to one of the most catastrophic events of all time where the environment is concerned?’ [The jury's still very much out on that one -- E.D.] I got a kick out of President Obama saying that even when the cameras go away we’ll still be there for you. That ain’t the way this is going to play out. If anything, the cameras being here have compelled outside interests – government, BP – to kick this into another gear. With all due respect, the President might have had his scenario off by 180 degrees. So we’ll keep coming back here, we won’t take our eyes off this region, we haven’t since we knew we had a Category 5 storm off the coastline five years ago.

As Ed writes, at least Williams is no longer literally bowing to Obama. At the Washington Examiner, Chris Stirewalt writes, “Obama pays price for thinking Bush was a dunce:” http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bios/chris-stirewalt.html


Obama, who railed against the oil industry and wrapped himself in the suffering of the poor people of New Orleans, surely was attuned to the risks at play in deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

But even he could not fly in like Superman and save the day.

Of all the fictions that Democrats embraced during the Bush presidency, perhaps the most dangerous was that Bush was an idiot.

John Kerry’s bitter joke to a college class about poor students getting “stuck in Iraq” and Obama’s famous line about being opposed to “dumb wars” reveal the view among liberal intellectuals that the country’s problems arose because Bush was a dunce.

It played well to the liberal base that sees Bush as Will Ferrell’s impersonation of him: a dope who was led around by Dick Cheney and a cabal of war-mongering oil barons. And as the Iraq war bogged down, New Orleans moldered under floodwaters and the Panic of 2008 wiped out retirement accounts, the idea that it could all be blamed on Bush’s incompetence was appealing.

It was certainly more appealing than a more “nuanced” (as Kerry would say) view that America, in the third decade of its third century, faced some nearly impossible challenges.

Agree with him or not, George W. Bush was no dummy. But assuming that he was one allowed Obama to believe the job of being president was easier than it is.

Obama’s misapprehension will pay bitter dividends for his presidency for years to come.

Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson sees echoes of 1979: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/our-1979/


About every 30-40 years, democratic citizenries begin to become complacent. They assume their defenses are unnecessary if not destabilizing, and take away from more needed social services and income redistribution. Deterrence and preparedness are assumed in turn the stone-age tools of unsophisticated mind. The peace that follows from past victories and postwar deterrence is considered artificial, and can instead grow far more organically from professed good intentions and signs of magnanimity, if not apology. Philosopher kings assure the world of a new age to come, one in which a new human nature replaces the old Neanderthal pessimism. Slogans that “we are the ones we have been waiting for”, “yes, we can”, “this is the moment”, and so on usher in the new golden age, free of nukes and war itself.

Carter’s Christian self-righteousness was simply a religious variant on Wilson’s academic haughtiness; Obama’s elite condescension — human nature can be uplifted and changed if it follows the exalted behavior of our President — is a mixture of Chicago activism and the hothouse of academia.

Again, remember 1979. I imagine that, like Carter, Obama will begin scrambling to restore deterrence, since the alternative would mean the end of his plans for amnesty, cap-and-trade and more expansion of the social welfare state. So expect a sudden tough line with Korea, more warnings to Iran, and in general some Carter-like posturing to make up for lost time.

We are in a very dangerous age indeed.

Given Carter’s relatively convincing impersonation of a southern reform-oriented small government kind of guy in 1976, the American people could be excused for picking him, after the non-diversified mass media (the very definition of epistemic closure) ginned up the Mother of All Media Storms against Richard Nixon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440144000?ie=UTF8&tag=eddriscollcom-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0440144000

As the crises started to mount, Carter at least had prior executive experience as governor of Georgia, but his ultra “progressive” mindset left him ill-equipped to handle the dangers of the real world — many of which, as VDH notes his article, were exacerbated by his own feckless administration. But as Jennifer Rubin writes, what does Obama fall back on, if the media’s love affair with him has cooled? http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/306101


If Obama isn’t going to get his 2008 marketing brand back, what does he do next? He’s never had to answer that because he’s never stayed in any political position long enough with enough coverage to be held accountable for his results. And he’s never been forced to deviate from his ultra-liberal ideological agenda. It’s also not clear that he is capable of changing his tune or even wants to. One term would be fine, he told us.

The interesting question for 2012 is what sort of candidate would Americans be attracted to as an alternative. Obama ran as Not Bush. (Turns out that most of Not Bush is disastrous.) So who is the Not Obama for 2012? Forget about name guessing — I mean, what kind of candidate would provide voters with what they are missing? It’s fair to anticipate that a competent, experienced, un-flashy, fiscal disciplinarian with no illusions about the world and no hesitancy about naming our enemies and holding dear our friends may be in style. We’ll see in the next year which candidates throw their hats into the ring and which match that description.

Fair enough — but let’s get to November before worrying about 2012.

Update: “Brian Williams Boasts of Bettering Obama in Oil Spill Compassion — But Lies About His Newscasts.“ http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/06/03/brian-williams-boasts-bettering-obama-oil-spill-compassion-lies-about-hi

[Jolie Rouge]

http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2010/06/Breaking%20Oil%20Spill%20Could%20Hit%20East%20Coas t%20By%20Summer.jpg

Ocean currents likely to carry oil along Atlantic coast
June 03, 2010

BOULDER—A detailed computer modeling study released today indicates that oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer. The modeling results are captured in a series of dramatic animations produced by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and collaborators.

http://www.ucar.edu/multimedia/videos/2010/2monCol4.1386x1054-trimmed.mov


This animation shows one scenario of how oil released at the location of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico may move in the upper 65 feet of the ocean. This is not a forecast, but rather, it illustrates a likely dispersal pathway of the oil for roughly four months following the spill. It assumes oil spilling continuously from April 20 to June 20. The colors represent a dilution factor ranging from red (most concentrated) to beige (most diluted). The dilution factor does not attempt to estimate the actual barrels of oil at any spot; rather, it depicts how much of the total oil from the source that will be carried elsewhere by ocean currents. For example, areas showing a dilution factor of 0.01 would have one-hundredth the concentration of oil present at the spill site.

The animation is based on a computer model simulation, using a virtual dye, that assumes weather and current conditions similar to those that occur in a typical year. It is one of a set of six scenarios released today that simulate possible pathways the oil might take under a variety of oceanic conditions. Each of the six scenarios shows the same overall movement of oil through the Gulf to the Atlantic and up the East Coast. However, the timing and fine-scale details differ, depending on the details of the ocean currents in the Gulf. The full set of six simulations can be found here. (Visualization by Tim Scheitlin and Mary Haley, NCAR; based on model simulations.) [Download high resolution video]The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication.

“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’” says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”

The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks. It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east. Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the uppermost region of the ocean is not known.

The scientists used a powerful computer model to simulate how a liquid released at the spill site would disperse and circulate, producing results that are not dependent on the total amount released. The scientists tracked the rate of dispersal in the top 65 feet of the water and at four additional depths, with the lowest being just above the sea bed.

“The modeling study is analogous to taking a dye and releasing it into water, then watching its pathway,” Peacock says.

The dye tracer used in the model has no actual physical resemblance to true oil. Unlike oil, the dye has the same density as the surrounding water, does not coagulate or form slicks, and is not subject to chemical breakdown by bacteria or other forces.

Peacock and her colleagues stress that the simulations are not a forecast because it is impossible to accurately predict the precise location of the oil weeks or months from now. Instead, the simulations provide an envelope of possible scenarios for the oil dispersal. The timing and course of the oil slick will be affected by regional weather conditions and the ever-changing state of the Gulf’s Loop Current—neither of which can be predicted more than a few days in advance. The dilution of the oil relative to the source will also be impacted by details such as bacterial degradation, which are not included in the simulations.

What is possible, however, is to estimate a range of possible trajectories, based on the best understanding of how ocean currents transport material. The oil trajectory that actually occurs will depend critically both on the short-term evolution of the Loop Current, which feeds into the Gulf Stream, and on the state of the overlying atmosphere. The flow in the model represents the best estimate of how ocean currents are likely to respond under typical wind conditions.

Picking up speed
Oil has been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20 from a blown-out undersea well, the result of an explosion and fire on an oil rig. The spill is located in a relatively stagnant area of the Gulf, and the oil so far has remained relatively confined near the Louisiana and Alabama coastlines, although there have been reports of small amounts in the Loop Current.

The model simulations show that a liquid released in the surface ocean at the spill site is likely to slowly spread as it is mixed by the ocean currents until it is entrained in the Loop Current. At that point, speeds pick up to about 40 miles per day, and when the liquid enters the Atlantic’s Gulf Stream it can travel at speeds up to about 100 miles per day, or 3,000 miles per month.

The six model simulations released today all have different Loop Current characteristics, and all provide slightly different scenarios of how the oil might be dispersed. The simulations all bring the oil to south Florida and then up the East Coast. However, the timing of the oil’s movement differs significantly depending on the configuration of the Loop Current.

The scenarios all differ in their starting conditions, a technique used in weather and climate forecasting to determine how uncertainty about current conditions might affect predictions of the future.


A still from the animation showing the oil trajectory after 130 days.Additional model studies are currently under way, looking further out in time, that will indicate what might happen to the oil in the Atlantic.

“We have been asked if and when remnants of the spill could reach the European coastlines,” says Martin Visbeck, a member of the research team with IFM-GEOMAR, University of Kiel, Germany. “Our assumption is that the enormous lateral mixing in the ocean together with the biological disintegration of the oil should reduce the pollution to levels below harmful concentrations. But we would like to have this backed up by numbers from some of the best ocean models.”

The scientists are using the Parallel Ocean Program, which is the ocean component of the Community Climate System Model, a powerful software tool designed by scientists at NCAR and the Department of Energy. They are conducting the simulations at supercomputers based at the New Mexico Computer Applications Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*News media terms of use: Reproduction to illustrate this story and nonprofit use permitted with proper attribution as provided above and acceptance of UCAR's terms of use. Find more images in the UCAR Digital Image Library.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

http://www2.ucar.edu/news/ocean-currents-likely-to-carry-oil-spill-along-atlantic-coast

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil Spill Cake
posted at 8:21 pm on June 3, 2010 by Laura Curtis
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/06/03/oil-spill-cake/

One of the reasons I love living in New Orleans is that this town has a very well developed sense of humor. As the 1991 Governor’s election approached, cars started sporting bumper stickers that read, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Edwards#A_second_comeback:_Edwards_vs._Duke. 2C_1991 In the days following Hurricane Katrina, we took comfort in reading a local news website where comments included fishing reports on Claiborne, Esplanade, and Canal Street, with high tide, low tide, and recommended bait. :shark: The Chocolateville song. http://pursuingholiness.com/2006/01/chillin-with-my-homies-in-chocolateville/ And a Christmas village in 2005 at a local mall included blue roofs, debris, and a helicopter rescue.

In the headlines post, Buzz grows: Is it time to nuke the oil leak? jake-the-goose made this comment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/us/03nuke.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


I was down in New Orleans yesterday – the fear and anxiety down there is off the charts on this whole subject. For any of us living across the U.S. – unless you are down there – you simply cannot imagine the state of fear that exists.

Wetlands will literally sink under this oil attack – and that will lead to unimaginable consequences.

The fear is unreal – you have to be there to appreciate it.

jake-the-goose on June 3, 2010 at 9:49 AM


And that’s true. There is no part of our local economy which will go unaffected by this oil spill. It’s hard to imagine, looking at the current circumstances, that this isn’t going to take a decade or more to get over.

And it’s going to have serious effects nationally.

Louisiana is the second largest fishery in the country.

Louisiana supplies 80% of the United States offshore oil production – and unlike other energy producing states, we do not receive 50% of federal royalties for that. We’ve just undergone a battle royale to get to 37.5%, and even that doesn’t start until 2017.

Oil companies have dredged over 10,000 miles of canals in our wetlands over the years, causing a great deal of damage and making us more vulnerable to hurricanes.

We lose about a football field’s worth of wetlands every 45 minutes.


The upside to this unpleasant situation is that we at least had jobs, not just working on the rigs, but in all the support industries. Now we stand to lose that too, with the upcoming shutdown of at least 33 deep water rigs, and rumors of closures of even rigs closer in to shore. It’s going to absolutely devastate our economy. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/06/03/03greenwire-deepwater-companies-pull-up-stakes-and-some-ma-10130.html

So yes, people are worried and scared. But we haven’t lost our sense of humor. Breaux Mart has a new product in the bakery:

http://media.hotair.com/greenroom/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/oilspillcake.jpg

That’s New Orleans for you. :cheers:


And related – this isn’t from New Orleans, but a whole lot of us here found it amusing; it’s been making the email rounds:

http://pursuingholiness.com/wp-content/uploads/worst_case_scenario.png


To clarify :
with the upcoming shutdown of at least 33 deep water rigs

$250,000 to $500,000 per rig per day times 33 rigs.

90 to 140 jobs per shift (2 shifts each day for 2 week stints) per rig times 33 rigs.

Source: Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association

[Jolie Rouge]

Feds send BP $69M bill as Obama plans trip to Gulf
By Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 16 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The federal government slapped BP with a $69 million bill Thursday to cover initial costs of responding to the largest oil spill in U.S. history. An angry President Barack Obama said he was convinced that BP has not moved quickly enough to stop the flow of oil and clean up the mess. :doh:

Obama, who on Friday planned to make his second visit in a week to the battered Gulf Coast, used his strongest language to date in assailing BP. "I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions," Obama told CNN's Larry King. "This is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years."

Obama said BP has felt his anger, but added that "venting and yelling at people" won't solve the problem. His remarks aired Thursday night.

Obama had not previously voiced such sweeping criticisms of BP. But he said Thursday he had not seen the kind of "rapid response" from the British company that he'd like.

The $69 million bill being sent to BP is the first of what are likely to be many bills sent to the oil company to cover expenses incurred by the government in responding to the spill, which has dumped at least 21 million gallons of oil into the Gulf, according to government estimates. A White House official said BP has until July 1 to pay the bill.

Meanwhile, the Minerals Management Service stopped issuing permits for new oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, even as an administration official denied a formal freeze had been decreed on drilling in shallow water. "There is no moratorium on shallow water drilling," said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "Shallow-water drilling may continue as long as oil and gas operations satisfy the environmental and safety requirements Secretary Salazar outlined in his report to the president and have exploration plans that meet those requirements."

Barkoff's comments appeared to contradict an e-mail sent out earlier in the day by a top official in the Gulf Coast office of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling.

Michael J. Saucier, regional supervisor of field operations for the MMS Gulf of Mexico region, told a company seeking a permit that "until further notice" no new drilling is being allowed in the Gulf, no matter the water depth. A copy of the e-mail was obtained by The Associated Press.

The e-mail came a day after the minerals agency granted a new drilling permit sought by Bandon Oil and Gas for a site about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast and 115 feet below the ocean surface. Environmental groups accused the administration of misleading the public by allowing work to resume in waters up to 500 feet deep while maintaining a moratorium on deepwater drilling

Obama announced the moratorium last week as part of the administration's response to the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which triggered the massive oil spill that is gushing millions of gallons in the Gulf.

The contradictory messages frustrated drilling critics and supporters alike. "Every single MMS reform and moratorium announcement since the explosion has gone through this same process of announcement, confusion, seeming violations, reinterpretation and reconfiguration," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity and an outspoken drilling opponent. "I've never seen such a confused, uncertain response to crisis."

A group of Louisiana lawmakers said the drilling bans could further devastate the state's economy, which is struggling with job losses and business shutdowns tied to the oil spill. "Katrina hurt us temporarily, but this will wipe us out altogether," said state Rep. Nita Hutter, a Republican who represents a district that was wrecked by Hurricane Katrina.

Republican Rep. Gordon Dove said it was unfair to penalize Exxon, Chevron and other oil companies "if BP did something that was careless." He said the shutdown of offshore drilling could force thousands of people out of work.

While details of the president's trip were still being worked out, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama will likely meet with governors of the affected states, local business leaders and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the government's response. Obama traveled to the Gulf twice last month, including a visit on May 28.

With the administration warning that the spill could continue through the summer, Gibbs said Obama plans to travel to the region "as often as the situation dictates."

Gibbs deflected criticism that Obama hasn't expressed enough anger or frustration over the failed attempts to stop the leak, insisting that the president would ultimately be judged on the effectiveness of the response, not his emotions. "Pounding on a podium isn't going to fix a hole in the ocean," Gibbs said.

The $69 million tab being sent to BP is the first of what are likely to be many bills sent to the oil company to cover expenses incurred by the government in responding to the spill. A White House official said BP has until July 1 to pay the bill.

Confusion over shallow-water drilling appeared to stem from new restrictions on offshore drilling announced Wednesday night.

Bob Abbey, the acting director of the Minerals Management Service, said operators will be required to submit additional information about potential risks and safety considerations before being allowed to drill. The rule applies even to those plans that have already been approved or received a waiver exempting them from detailed environmental scrutiny, Abbey said.

The new information must be submitted before any drilling of new wells begins, Abbey said, adding that the rule should tighten safety standards and improve consideration of risks in drilling plans.

Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore Inc., a leading Gulf Coast oil rig company, said it's unclear what the Interior Department wants before allowing shallow-water drilling to continue — or how long the approval process will take. "What we do know is that we've been told that additional safety information will be required in order for us to commence drilling," Noe said. "We're hoping it's something that can be done quickly."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100604/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_washington/print;_ylt=AsVwv2zJKfi.TKk.Frk5H_Gp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama sees progress on oil spill response
Nancy Benac, Associated Press Writer – 6 mins ago

KENNER, La. – President Barack Obama says progress apparently is being made in fighting the enormous Gulf oil spill.

But the president says it's "way too early to be optimistic" about BP's latest attempt to stanch the spill by capping the well and siphoning off some of the crude oil.

Obama spoke Friday as he visited Louisiana on day 45 of the catastrophic spill that's unleashed tens of millions of gallons into the Gulf of Mexico.

He criticized BP for spending on advertising and shareholder dividends, saying the company must not do that if it's "nickeling and diming" local businesses and workers.

Obama got a briefing on the spill and headed to a barrier island to visit local workers affected by the catastrophe.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

KENNER, La. (AP) — Stormy skies greeted President Barack Obama as he arrived at the Gulf of Mexico Friday to encourage residents and get a fresh look at the horrifying oil spill that is testing his presidency.

Obama immediately huddled in a small airport building with Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the top federal official on the spill, along with the governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama and other officials.

Stressing his personal leadership of the federal response, Obama was heading to Grand Isle, La., a barrier island that's been affected by the spill and where nearby beaches are being lapped by oil.

The president's third visit to the Gulf came as engineers with British oil company BP worked to settle a funnel-like cap over the deep-sea leak to try to collect some of the crude now fouling four states. Oil continued to spew, generating frightening photos of seabirds clogged in the muck.

Underscoring the mounting political implications, Obama abruptly canceled plans for his trip to Indonesia and Australia later this month. Ahead of the Gulf visit, he declared himself furious at a situation that "is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years." He criticized BP for not responding more quickly.

But polls show the public growing more negative toward the president's own handling of the spill, and he was aiming to demonstrate he was staying on top of the situation Friday — without getting in the way. Obama visited the Gulf region twice in May, and this tour surely will not be his last.

"You never want to take resources away from the response and recovery efforts, so we're certainly mindful of that," said spokesman Robert Gibbs. "At the same time ... I think he'll go as often as he thinks that is productive in aiding those response efforts."

Somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons of crude oil have been disgorged into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, according to government estimates. Eleven workers were killed in the blast.

Obama told CNN's Larry King on Thursday he was furious that "someone didn't think through the consequences of their actions," and he tried to deflect criticism that he hasn't shown enough emotion about the epic dimensions of the problem.

"I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people," the president said, "but that's not the job I was hired to do. My job is to solve this problem."

His administration on Thursday handed BP a $69 million bill for recovery costs to date — a figure sure to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Erica Werner contributed to this report from Washington.


comments

Oilgate = Obama's Katrina. No, this is what he wanted a reason to shut down and take over the oil industry. (NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE).

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I reside in the affected area and we are tired of the flipping press conferences. It took a foreign company with heavy political ties to the Democratic party to come and ruin our gulf coast along with the many lives this will impact. Obama can't fix the damn hole in the pipe but clean up efforts should have been handled by the federal govenment so BP could have focused entirely on fixing the problem. Using his daughter in his press conference and our Rep. Melancon crying on national tv won't cut it with us. Blaming Bush is old , if anything Obama should have learned from the Bush ordeal and made sure help for clean up was on its way. People working out there are having to carry respirators due to the chemicals they decided to use, which our state health dept told them not to use. Hurricane season is upon us and with the lost of employment for so many people, should a storm come this way, I am not sure how people could handle the insurance deductibles, which are the highest in the nation. My deductible is $15,000. So please no more soap box speeches or crying , this is not your chance to campaign on our time. If you are not here to help get out of the frickin way!!!!!!!!!!!

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So if there is another air disaster if Obama going to shut down the airlines????????? If there is a bus disaster will he shut them down ???? What other industry is next?

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I do hope he spends more time looking at the entire region, with flyovers, boats and gets his hand in the goo that will kill every bird, fish, turtle, dolphing, crabs, oyster beds, and the list is so long would have to type all day long, the oil should have never been allowed to drift from the site it should have be pumped with huge million gallons per minute into oil tankers we should have seen circle's and circles of booms around the site keeping this mess near the rig with in twenty miles tops no reason for this mess Bp failed as they said dont worry we have it under control...now what the hell went wrong control I dont thinks so weeks and weeks of this flow has destroyed the lives of many. I hope they stop this today/ Obamma needs to spend a few days to even get a idea how bad it has become......

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President Obama should act like the President of the United States instead of acting as the head of the Democratic Party. He was elected to be President of all the people in the USA not just Democrats. Quit campaigning, politizing, poiniting fingers, blaming Bush for everything, and start being President.

Nuff said.

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He takes responsibility................but blames Bush.

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While we were distracted by the oil spill.....hmmmm....wonder who is really responsible???

On Wednesday Obama Took the First Major Step in a Plan to Ban All Firearms in the United States

> On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms. The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened.

> Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment. This has happened in other countries, past and present!

THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR A FALSE WARNING. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control. Read the Article U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto. The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush's administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.

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Because of the importance of Beatles, basketball, golf, Cinco de Mayo, vacation time, White House@#$%tail parties and Hollywood I can see why our President hasn't the time to honor this nations heros at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day. He is a busy man. All our other Presidents that honored Arlington burials on Memorial Day in the past had nothing else to do so they just showed up?

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill's threat to wildlife turns real
By Holbrook Mohr And John Flesher, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 35 mins ago


http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100604/capt.ad261cda59174e09925d4ed58349c174-a90d9ed5642d45edb47b697779c6296b-0.jpg?x=400&y=271&q=85&sig=3B5v.3V9B_4aWfIzFND95g--

A Brown Pelican is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast after being drenched in oil Thursday, June 3, 2010


ON BARATARIA BAY, La. – The wildlife apocalypse along the Gulf Coast that everyone has feared for weeks is fast becoming a terrible reality.

Pelicans struggle to free themselves from oil, thick as tar, that gathers in hip-deep pools, while others stretch out useless wings, feathers dripping with crude. Dead birds and dolphins wash ashore, coated in the sludge. Se ash ell's that once glinted pearly white under the hot June sun are stained crimson.

Scenes like this played out along miles of shoreline Saturday, nearly seven weeks after a BP rig exploded and the wellhead a mile below the surface began belching millions of gallon of oil.

"These waters are my backyard, my life," said boat captain Dave Marino, a firefighter and fishing guide from Myrtle Grove. "I don't want to say heartbreaking, because that's been said. It's a nightmare. It looks like it's going to be wave after wave of it and nobody can stop it."

The oil has steadily spread east, washing up in greater quantities in recent days, even as a cap placed by BP over the blownout well began to collect some of the escaping crude. The cap, resembling an upside-down funnel, has captured about 252,000 gallons of oil, according to Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis.

If earlier estimates are correct, that means the cap is capturing from a quarter to as much as half the oil spewing from the blowout each day. But that is a small fraction of the roughly 24 million to 47 million gallons government officials estimate have leaked into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers, making it the nation's largest oil spill ever.

Allen, who said the goal is to gradually raise the amount of the oil being captured, compared the process to stopping the flow of water from a garden hose with a finger: "You don't want to put your finger down too quickly, or let it off too quickly."

BP officials are trying to capture as much oil as possible without creating too much pressure or allowing the buildup of ice-like hydrates, which form when water and natural gas combine under high pressures and low temperatures.

President Barack Obama pledged Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address to fight the spill with the people of the Gulf Coast. His words for oil giant BP PLC were stern: "We will make sure they pay every single dime owed to the people along the Gulf coast."

But his reassurances offer limited consolation to the people who live and work along the coasts of four states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — now confronting the oil spill firsthand.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., boardwalks leading to hotels were tattooed with oil from beachgoers' feet. A slick hundreds of yards long washed ashore at a state park, coating the white sand with a thick, red stew. Cleanup workers rushed to contain it in bags, but more washed in before they could remove the first wave of debris.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Allen met for more than an hour Saturday in Mobile, Ala., agreeing to a new plan that would significantly increase protection on the state's coast with larger booms, beachfront barriers, skimmers and a new system to protect Perdido Bay near the Florida line.

Riley, who was angered by a Coast Guard decision to move boom from Alabama to Louisiana, said the barriers must be up within days for him to be satisfied. Allen said he needed to report to the president before confirming more details of the agreement.

The oil is showing up right at the beginning of the lucrative tourist season, and beachgoers taking to the region's beaches haven't been able to escape it.

"This makes me sick," said Rebecca Thomasson of Knoxville, Tenn., her legs and feet smeared with brown streaks of crude. "We were over in Florida earlier and it was bad there, but it was nothing like this."

At Pensacola Beach, Erin Tamber, who moved to the area from New Orleans after surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, inspected a beach stained orange by the retreating tide.

"I feel like I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump," she said.

Back in Louisiana, along the beach at Queen Bess Island, oil pooled several feet deep, trapping birds against containment boom. The futility of their struggle was confirmed when Joe Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, sank thigh deep in oil on nearby East Grand Terre Island and had to be pulled from the tar.

"I would have died if I would have been out here alone," he said.

With no oil response workers on Queen Bess, Plaquemines Parish coastal zone management director P.J. Hahn decided he could wait no longer, pulling an exhausted brown pelican from the oil, the slime dripping from its wings.

"We're in the sixth week, you'd think there would be a flotilla of people out here," Hahn said. "As you can see, we're so far behind the curve in this thing."

After six weeks with one to four birds a day coming into Louisiana's rescue center for oiled birds at Fort Jackson, 53 arrived Thursday and another 13 Friday morning, with more on the way. Federal authorities say 792 dead birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other wildlife have been collected from the Gulf of Mexico and its coastline.

Yet scientists say the wildlife death toll remains relatively modest, well below the tens of thousand of birds, otters and other creatures killed after the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound. The numbers have stayed comparatively low because the Deepwater Horizon rig was 50 miles off the coast and most of the oil has stayed in the open sea. The Valdez ran aground on a reef close to land, in a more enclosed setting.

Experts say the Gulf's marshes, beaches and coastal waters, which nurture a dazzling array of life, could be transformed into killing fields, though the die-off could take months or years and unfold largely out of sight. The damage could be even greater beneath the water's surface, where oil and dispersants could devastate zooplankton and tiny invertebrate communities at the base of the aquatic food chain.

"People naturally tend to focus on things that are most conspicuous, like oiled birds, but in my opinion the impacts on fisheries will be much more severe," said Rich Ambrose, director of the environmental science and engineering at program at UCLA.

The Gulf is also home to dolphins and species including the endangered sperm whale. A government report found that dolphins with prolonged exposure to oil in the 1990s experienced skin injuries and burns, reduced neurological functions and lower hemoglobin levels in their blood. It concluded, though, that the effects probably wouldn't be lethal because many creatures would avoid the oil. Yet dolphins in the Gulf have been spotted swimming through plumes of crude.

Gilly Llewellyn, oceans program leader with the World Wildlife Fund in Australia, said she observed the same behavior by dolphins following a 73-day spill last year in the Timor Sea.

"A heartbreaking sight," Llewellyn said. "And what we managed to see on the surface was undoubtedly just a fraction of what was happening."

The prospect left fishing guide Marino shaking his head, as he watched the oil washing into a marsh and over the body of a dead pelican. Species like shrimp and crab flourish here, finding protection in the grasses. Fish, birds and other creatures feed here.

"It's going to break that cycle of life," Marino said. "It's like pouring gas in your aquarium. What do you think that's going to do?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100606/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Arocft8xbVplFJFVeY2VzfOp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Jimmy Buffett laments the fouling of his paradise
By Melissa Nelson, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 5, 4:08 pm ET

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – The timing might be a bit off for tourists hoping to waste away in Margaritaville. But that doesn't bother Jimmy Buffett.

The singer — whose tunes are as much a part of life in this beach town as fried grouper sandwiches, Land Shark beer and the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels — is planning to open a 162-room Margaritaville Hotel in a week.

As tar balls came ashore Saturday from an oil plume shooting out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, Buffett said he had no plans to delay the opening.

"This will pass," he said as walked along the city's beachfront and fishing pier with Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist.

Curious beachgoers mobbed the duo in a frenzy rarely seen on the normally laid-back beach, snapping cell phone pictures and laughing as Crist and Buffett spent about an hour doing interviews and talking.

Buffett told fans he often went to Pensacola Beach while growing up nearby in Alabama. He said his favorite memories are of sunsets in the fall. He joked that he also enjoys the sunrises — but usually sleeps through them.

Buffet said the community will get through the crisis by pulling together. He wants people in the area to know that he's there for them as the oil encroaches on their leisure and livelihoods.

If Buffett's good for anything, it's "helping people forget their troubles for a couple of hours," the "Cheeseburger in Paradise" singer said.

Buffett's $50 million hotel sits on the Gulf near the main section of Pensacola Beach. Hundreds of applicants lined up outside this week for a job fair even as television trucks filled a nearby parking lot to report on the oil slick's arrival.

The hotel sits on land where Hurricane Ivan destroyed a previous hotel in 2004.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100605/ap_on_en_mu/us_people_jimmy_buffett/print;_ylt=Arocft8xbVplFJFVeY2VzfMnHL8C;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Birds frozen in oil: image of a desperate summer
By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Sat Jun 5, 3:46 am ET

A bird is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100604/capt.befc0f8b50a44a05b9788f972a9e2e99-d7edcc6121014f52bb015866b461698a-0.jpg?x=400&y=248&q=85&sig=05N6I3G3ipyct1rJMaAiDA--

They are the ghastly images of a summer fouled before it started. Squawking seagulls and majestic brown pelicans coated in oil. Click. Gunk dripping from their beaks. Click. Big eyes wide open. Click. Even the professionals want to turn away. They can't.

"They get me. It's just inherently sad," said Nils Warnock, a wildlife recovery specialist. "You see this bird totally covered in oil and all you can see are those eyes looking at you blinking. You'd have to be pretty tough not to be affected by that image."

Warnock didn't see the birds in person. He's in California, but the pictures still hit him in the gut. Warnock has been rescuing birds in oil slicks since 1985 and he still chokes up when talking about photos of birds he hasn't seen in person.

Now put yourself in Melanie Driscoll's shoes. She doesn't just see the pictures. She sees the birds close-up through her bird conservation work for the National Audubon Society across Louisiana. The pleading eyes get her, too.

Driscoll has to shut down her emotions while helping coordinate the rescue of the birds. But the feelings sneak back at night, keeping her awake, making her see oily blackness creeping across her cats and even across the moon when she looks up.

When environmental groups try to tug at the public's heart and wallet, they focus on what biologists call "charismatic megafauna." It's the feathered or furry helpless critter that you can relate to. It's not the oiled hermit crab — an image joked about as not very touching by Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" Thursday night.

It's got to have eyes that melt your heart. And that's what's all over the nation's front pages now.

"The pelican has really become the poster child for this that people are really focusing on," Driscoll said. "The bird is the symbol. They are visible. They are charismatic."

Up in Alaska, where it has been 21 years since the Exxon Valdez spill, residents watching the images of oiled birds are turning off their TV sets because it is just too hard to see, said Nancy Bird. She is director of the Prince William Sound Science Center, which still monitors the effects of the 1989 spill.

"I just wish that somebody would put them out of their misery very quickly," she said. "Watching an animal like that die a slow death is pretty disturbing."

The birds seem frozen in oil. The image is apt.

Birds that get oiled can die from being too cold, or too hot, because the crude oil interferes with the natural oils that make them waterproof. That means their sensitive skin is exposed to extremes in temperature. Even in the relatively mild Gulf waters, they can "die from hypothermia," said Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They can also drown.

The brown pelican, the state symbol of Louisiana, is now also the symbol of death — not just for the birds in the pictures, but for the likely thousands unseen.

"If you're seeing oiled birds, we can assume that there's a lot of death going on," Rosenberg said. "They literally are an indicator of what's going on in the entire ecosystem."

Some species of birds, especially those that lurk hidden in marshes — such as the clapper rail, seaside sparrow and mottled duck — will not be photographed coated with oil. They'll just disappear sight unseen, Driscoll said.

"Those birds won't get their eulogy," Driscoll said. "They'll just disappear. It's an unseen tragedy."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100605/ap_on_sc/us_gulf_oil_spill_bird_images/print;_ylt=Arocft8xbVplFJFVeY2VzfOp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[gmyers]

With the way gas prices are I didn't know some oil companies are closing oil rigs and laying people off. My brothers worked for Diamond M for over 25 years and they're closing his rig and laying him and a lot of other people off. They've shut down five rigs and are moving the rest overseas. Shoot I thought if anybody didn't have to worry about being laid off it would be people that work offshore. He's been moved to three rigs to save his job but they keep shutting the rigs down he gets put on.

[pepperpot]

A bird is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100604/capt.befc0f8b50a44a05b9788f972a9e2e99-d7edcc6121014f52bb015866b461698a-0.jpg?x=400&y=248&q=85&sig=05N6I3G3ipyct1rJMaAiDA--


I find this picture just so upsetting and disturbing.....:(

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil crisis could stretch into the fall
By Ray Henry And Jay Reeves, Associated Press Writers 13 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A containment cap was capturing more and more of the crude pouring from a damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, but that bit of hope was tempered Sunday by a sharp dose of pragmatism as the federal government's point man warned the crisis could stretch into the fall.

The inverted funnel-like cap is being closely watched for whether it can make a serious dent in the flow of new oil. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, overseeing the government's response to the spill, reserved judgment, saying he didn't want to risk offering false encouragement.

Instead, he warned on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the battle to contain the oil is likely to stretch into the fall. The cap will trap only so much of the oil, and relief wells being drilled won't be completed until August. In the meantime, oil will continue to spew out.

"But even after that, there will be oil out there for months to come," Allen said.

"This will be well into the fall. This is a siege across the entire Gulf. This spill is holding everybody hostage, not only economically but physically. And it has to be attacked on all fronts," he said.

Since it was placed over the busted well on Thursday, the cap has been siphoning an increasing amount of oil. On Saturday, it funneled about 441,000 gallons to a tanker on the surface, up from about 250,000 gallons it captured Friday.

But it's not clear how much is still escaping from the well that federal authorities at one point estimated was leaking between 500,000 gallons and 1 million gallons a day. Since the spill began nearly seven weeks ago, roughly 23 million to 49 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf.

The prospect that the crisis could stretch beyond summer was devastating to residents along the Gulf, who are seeing thicker globs of oil show up in increasing volume all along the coastline.

In Ruth Dailey's condominium in Gulf Shores, Ala., floors already are smeared with dark blotches of oil, she said, and things are only going to get worse.

"This is just the beginning," she said. "I have a beachfront condo for a reason. With this, no one will want to come."

Kelcey Forrestier, 23, of New Orleans, said she no longer trusts the word of either BP or the U.S. government in laying out the extent of the spill. But it is clear to Forrestier, just coming in off the water at Okaloosa Island, Fla., that the spill and its damage will last long into the future.

"Oil just doesn't go away. Oil doesn't disappear," said Forrestier, who just earned a biology degree. "It has to go somewhere and it's going to come to the Gulf beaches."

BP chief executive Tony Hayward told the BBC on Sunday that he believed the cap was likely to capture "the majority, probably the vast majority" of the oil gushing from the well. The gradual increase in the amount being captured is deliberate, in an effort to prevent water from getting inside and forming a frozen slush that foiled a previous containment attempt.

Allen was reluctant to characterize the degree of progress, saying much more had to be done.

"We need to underpromise and overdeliver," he said.

On Sunday, BP said it had closed one of four vents that are allowing oil to escape and preventing that water intake. The company said some of the remaining vents may remain open to keep the cap system stable.

Hayward told the BBC that the company hopes a second containment system will be in place by next weekend. Allen told CBS that the oil would stop flowing only when the existing well is plugged with cement once the relief wells have been completed.

Once the cap is fully operational, if it is ultimately successful, it could capture a maximum of 630,000 gallons of oil a day.

Besides installing the containment cap, BP officials have said they want a second option for siphoning off oil by next weekend. The plan would use lines and pipes that previously injected mud down into the well — one of several failed efforts over the past six-plus weeks to contain the leak — and instead use them to suck up oil and send it to a drilling rig on the ocean surface.

BP also wants to install by late June another system to help cope with hurricanes that could roar over the site of the damaged well. When finished, there would be a riser floating about 300 feet below the ocean's surface — far enough below the water so it would not be disturbed by powerful hurricane winds and waves but close enough so ships forced to evacuate could easily reconnect to the pipes once the storm has passed.

None of these fixes will stop the well from leaking; they're simply designed to capture what's leaking until the relief wells can be drilled.

Since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers, BP PLC has tried and failed a number of efforts to contain the leak. In the past week, increasing quantities of thick oily sludge have been making their way farther east, washing up on some of the region's hallmark white-sand beaches and coating marshes in black ooze. An observation flight spotted a sheen of oil 150 miles west of Tampa, but officials said Sunday they didn't expect it to reach western Florida any time soon.

Already, cleanup crews along the coast were struggling to keep pace with oil washing up thicker and faster by the hour. The sight and smell of oil undermined any consolation offered by reports of progress at the wellhead. Instead, Gulf residents voiced frustration with the apparent holes in cleanup efforts.

At Gulf Shores, Dailey walked along a line of oil mixed with seaweed that stretched as far as the eye could see. Collecting bits of the rust-colored oil did nothing to ease her anger. Clumps of seaweed hiding tar balls make the scene appear better than it really is, she said. Pick up a piece of weed and often there's oil underneath.

"They're lying when they say they're cleaning these beaches," said Dailey, of Huntsville. "They're saying that because they still want people to come."

Eventually, workers used a big sand-sifting machine to clean the public beach, leaving it spotless, at least for a while.

But a couple miles away, workers cleaning a section of sand at a state park finished their work and left their refuse on the beach in the way of the incoming tide.

"Waves are washing over plastic bags filled with tar and oil. It's crazy," said Mike Reynolds, a real estate agent and director of Share The Beach, a turtle conservation group.

At Pensacola Beach, Fla., the turquoise waves also were flecked with floating balls of tar. Buck Langston, who has been coming to the beach to collect shells for 38 years, watched as his family used improvised chopsticks to collect the tar in plastic containers.

"Yesterday it wasn't like this, this heavy," said Langston, of Baton Rouge, La. "I don't know why cleanup crews aren't out here."

As hundreds of cars streamed through the toll booths at the entrance to the beach, a protester stood at the side of the road wearing a gas mask, lab coat, latex gloves and holding a "Drill Baby Drill" sign with tea bags hanging from the edges.

Shawn Luzmoor said he works at a local environmental lab and has been testing the oil and tar that is washing up on the beaches.

"It's not safe and it's not right what's happening out there," he said.

Allen expressed similar frustration, ordering cleanup crews to the Alabama coastline over the weekend after surveying the scene from the air. But he acknowledged the relative futility of their efforts.

"It's so widespread, and it's intermittent," he said. "That's what's so challenging about this. Everyone wants certainty. With an oil spill like this, there isn't any."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100607/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=ArUulwSKw5fh_fkMkvxenymp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

AP IMPACT: Many Gulf fed'l judges have oil links
Curt Anderson, Ap Legal Affairs Writer – 2 hrs 46 mins ago

MIAMI – More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.

Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean — and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year. The AP reviewed 2008 disclosure forms, the most recent available.

Those three companies are named as defendants in virtually all of the 150-plus lawsuits seeking damages, mainly for economic losses in the fishing, seafood, tourism and related industries, that have been filed over the growing oil spill since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Attorneys for the companies and those suing them are pushing for consolidation of the cases in one court, with BP recommending Texas and others advocating for Louisiana and other states.

A Washington-based federal judicial panel is scheduled to meet next month to decide whether to consolidate the cases and, if so, which judge should be assigned the monumental task. The job would include such key pretrial decisions as certifying a large class of plaintiffs to seek damages, a potential multibillion-dollar settlement, whether to dismiss the cases and what documents BP and the other companies might be forced to produce in court.

The AP review of disclosure statements shows the oil and gas industry's roots run as deep in the Gulf Coast's judiciary as they do in the region's economy. For example, one federal judge in Texas is a member of Houston's Petroleum Club, an "exclusive, handsome club of, and for, men of the oil industry."

Federal judicial rules require judges to disqualify themselves from hearing cases involving a company in which they have a direct financial interest, and some Louisiana judges have already done so. For example, U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon in New Orleans, who reported ownership of BP stock, issued an order in early May that the court clerk not allot cases involving BP or related entities to her docket.

Another New Orleans jurist, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, said in court Friday he is selling his oil and gas investments — which included Transocean and Halliburton — to avoid any perception of a conflict. Barbier is presiding over about 20 spill-related lawsuits and some attorneys are recommending that he be chosen to oversee all cases filed nationally.

Still another judge in Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon, recused himself because his attorney son-in-law is representing several people and businesses filing suits against BP and the other companies over the rig explosion.

In many ways, the financial conflict rules are murky. For example, a judge does not have to step aside if the investments are part of a mutual fund over which they have no management control. Mere ties to companies or entities in the same industry, no matter how extensive, also don't require disqualification, according to legal experts.

"The specific rule forbids judges from hearing a case in which they have a financial interest. The more general rule forbids them from hearing cases in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned," said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor who has closely studied judicial ethics.

So a judge like U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval of New Orleans would not have to disqualify himself even though he reported royalties from "mineral interest No. 1 and No. 2" in Terrebonne Parish, La., on his 2008 forms. Likewise for Senior U.S. District Judge William Barbour Jr. of Mississippi, who listed at least 30 oil and gas interests in three states including "McGowan Working Partners" and "Petro-Hunt Bovina Field," both in Mississippi.

Some judges have close ties to the energy industry that aren't for financial gain, but could still raise questions of potential bias.

The judge BP wants to hear all of the spill-related cases, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston, for the past two years has been a "distinguished lecturer" focusing on ethical issues for the 35,000-member American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Hughes is not paid a fee but does receive reimbursements for travel, food and lodging, said association spokesman Larry Nation. Hughes has appeared at petroleum geologist meetings in several Texas cities, in New Orleans and also in Cape Town, South Africa. He is scheduled to give a lecture later this month in Calgary, Canada, the oil and gas capital of that country.

"Under the circumstances, I can see why the questions are being raised," Nation said. "But one of the reasons Judge Hughes was chosen to be a lecturer is that he is known as a very ethical person. I would think his being an ethics lecturer for our organization would be a positive, not a negative."

Hughes said at a hearing Friday that his work for the geologists poses no conflict and that his other oil and gas investments — which include royalties from several mineral rights interests — are not connected to BP or the other companies involved in the spill lawsuits.

Florida attorney Scott Weinstein, whose firm represents charter captains and other companies suffering economic loss from the spill — including the owners of the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum in Key West — said people might think it's unfair for BP to win its wish with a Texas judge rather than one seated in Louisiana or Florida, where the spill's impacts are greater.

"I would never assume that a judge is biased because of the jurisdiction that he or she sits in," Weinstein said. Still, "if this case winds up in Houston, many of the victims will feel very distant from where that justice is being handed out. It will not make sense to them."

Another Florida plaintiffs' attorney, Stuart Smith, was more blunt about the companies' aims.

"They would get much more sympathetic judges and perhaps a more sympathetic jury," Smith said.

In court papers, BP says that Hughes has the "experience and capacity" to handle the lawsuits and that Houston is the ideal location because most of the defendants' companies have headquarters or major operations there. BP spokesman have repeatedly declined to comment on pending lawsuits.

Some attorneys have come up with an unusual assertion: import a New York federal judge with a strong background in environmental lawsuits to Louisiana to preside over the cases.

They are recommending that the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation appoint U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin. Scheindlin presided over settlement of some 200 lawsuits brought against BP and other oil companies over a toxic additive called MTBE that contaminated drinking supplies nationally — and she has no oil and gas investments, according to her financial disclosure forms.

Attorneys with the Weitz & Luxenberg firm in New York said they recommended Scheindlin rather than a Louisiana judge because "most or all of the judges in the (Louisiana) district have a conflict and cannot preside" over the consolidated cases.

Scheindlin's deputy said Friday she was out of town and unavailable to comment on whether she would accept such an appointment.

The judicial panel meets July 29 in Boise, Idaho, to hear arguments on consolidation of the oil spill cases. Recommendations also have been made for sending the cases to Alabama, Mississippi and South Florida.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100607/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_judge_conflicts;_ylt=AgI7nYYLeFz ntdA9hei7bOus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpbjdhYnNwBHBvcwMzNwR zZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDYXBpbXBhY 3RtYW55


The only problem with this is the fact that MOST people on the coast have these types of "ties" with the oil industry. For example ME : DH works for Texaco/Shell; my brother works for MMS; two bil work for Exxon, another for Haliburton; every one of my sibs & most of my il own stock in Exxon/Mobile ( mine was an inheritance so old it is Standard Oil stock...) BP is about to sink a well behind my subdivision so we could recieve royalties from that. My sister is part owner of an Enviromental Engineering firm, I have cousins who work for Dow, or various off shore companies, and so on and so on and so on ...

comments

When crap happens.. you get stories like this trying to expose anybody that might have oily hands. Obama and the Dems did get mucho petro dollars from BP.. but that doesn't prove anything wrong has happened. The real story is the gush of oil that needs to be contained. The feds will have a role in the clean up and the courts will have role in the BP money dispersement. I have to go now and fill my hybrid car with gas.

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This article is correct in that many judges do have oil and gas connections along the Gulf Coast. That should come as no surprise to anyone one and it is legal. However, there are many federal judges to hear these lawsuits. But expect no big settlements . BP's lawyers will keep this tied up in appeals for years.

[Jolie Rouge]

Trained noses to sniff out Gulf seafood for oil
[i]Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago

PASCAGOULA, Miss. – William Mahan bends over a bowl of raw shrimp and inhales deeply, using his left hand to wave the scent up toward his nose. Deep breath. Exhale. Repeat. He clears his palate with a bowl of freshly cut watermelon before moving on to raw oysters. Deep breath. Exhale. Repeat.

He's one of about 40 inspectors trained recently at a federal fisheries lab in Pascagoula, Miss., to sniff out seafood tainted by oil in the Gulf of Mexico and make sure the product reaching consumers is safe to eat.

But with thousands of fishermen bringing in catch at countless docks across the four-state region, the task of inspectors, both sniffers and others, is daunting. It's certainly not fail-safe.

The first line of defense began with closing a third of federal waters to fishing and hundreds more square-miles of state waters. Now comes the nose.

Mahan is an agricultural extension director with the University of Florida based in Apalachicola, where some of the world's most famous oysters are culled.

"We're being trained to detect different levels of taint, which in this case is oil," Mahan said last week. "We started out sniffing different samples of oil to sort of train our noses and minds to recognize it."

So what does an oily fish smell like?

"Well, it has an oil odor to it," Mahan said. "Everyone has a nose they bring to it ... Everybody's nose works differently. For me, the oysters are a little more challenging."

The human nose has been used for centuries to aid in making wine, butter and cheese, and is a highly efficient and trustworthy tool, said Brian Gorman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is hosting the courses along with the nonprofit Battle Creek, Mich.-based International Food Protection Training Institute.

"Properly trained noses are really remarkable organs," Gorman said.

Even so, inspectors can't be everywhere. The trained sniffers will be deployed where needed, when suspicions are raised about seafood being illegally culled from closed waters, or even to test fish from open waters. No agency has yet reported finding or stopping any tainted seafood from getting to market.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has also been sampling seafood both in closed and open waters, and sending it off for chemical testing, with more than 600 fish and shrimp processed to date.

State and local inspectors are fanning out across the region to docks, seafood processors and restaurants, some now armed with specially trained noses. NOAA currently has 55 inspectors at its Mississippi lab, with another 55 in training.

"The message we're delivering is simple: The seafood in your grocery store or local restaurant is safe to eat, and that goes for seafood harvested from the Gulf," said Kevin Griffis of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also has a role with its own inspectors, though the agency said it only has "several seafood specialists" currently in the Gulf area.

"We are ramping up inspections at facilities in the region," said FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott, adding that inspectors would be present at seafood processors throughout the Gulf states.

She said the agency has deployed a mobile lab to Florida that is testing samples of fish caught in waters not yet believed to be impacted by oil, because fish don't stay in one place.

Gulf fishermen are already hurting from the perception that their product is tainted, said Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.

"Some people also just think we're shut down altogether," Smith said, adding that higher prices for shrimp are causing smaller businesses to cancel orders simply because they can't afford it.

Smith said no oily seafood will ever make it to market.

"You're going to smell it, you're going to see it. It would be almost impossible for it to make it to market," he said.

Fishermen say they can't sell a tainted product anyway, whether it is inspected or not. Earlier in the week, fishermen brought in thousands of pounds of shrimp caught off Louisiana to the docks at Pass Christian, Miss., where the catch was offloaded and sold to processors and customers on site. No inspectors were present.

"No oil, not even a drop," said fishermen Mike Nguyen, who brought in 3,000 pounds of shrimp on Wednesday.

"When the shrimp get oily, they die and they stink," he said. "See, they're alive."

Joe Jenkins owns Crystal Seas Seafood Company on the docks at Pass Christian. He'll be buying thousands of pounds of shrimp.

"Here, we don't have inspectors on any level so we have to inspect our own seafood products to make sure they're safe and oil-free and good to eat," Jenkins said. "We're not going to have inspectors everywhere. Everybody's got to do their own job ... to make sure they don't have a problem with oily shrimp whatsoever."

Mississippi shrimper Richard Bosarge agreed, and said no one wants to sell oily shrimp.

"If we catch oily shrimp, the nets are coming up," Bosarge said shortly before heading out to sea.

He called the sniffers "ridiculous."

"They're going to smell it? No way," added Mike Triana, who works for a Mississippi gas company along the coast. "How they gonna know? I ain't eating any of it. I don't trust the nose."

Gerald Wojtala, director of the International Food Protection Training Institute, acknowledged that nosing around seafood may sound silly, but said it's a time-proven technique.

"The human nose has been used on a lot of (oil) spill response," Wojtala said. "There are a lot of sophisticated tests, but when you think about it, do you want to run a test that takes seven days and costs thousands of dollars?

"This saves a lot of time and money," he added, "and it puts more eyes and noses at different points in the system."

Still, Wojtala said, nothing is fail-safe. Even without an oil spill, people sometimes get sick from tainted seafood, or suffer illnesses from contamination in red meat such as E. coli.

"It's safe to say there is no 100-percent guarantee," he said. "There's never a 100-percent guarantee. We can only be as safe as we can be."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100607/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_seafood_sniffers;_ylt=AuR2hIkEly .ak8Z76C_UuAqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFmMmdkaGRhBHBvcwMxMD EEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9idXNpbmVzcwRzbGsDdHJhaW5lZG5v c2Vz

[Jolie Rouge]

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A dead turtle floats on a pool of oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in Barataria Bay off the coast of Louisiana.


BP plans to replace containment cap next month
Ray Henry And Harry Weber, Associated Press Writers – 9 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – As officials reported a gradual increase in the amount of oil being captured from a spewing wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, BP PLC said it plans to replace the cap collecting the crude with a slightly bigger device next month.

The newer cap will "provide a better, tighter fit" than the current one collecting roughly one-third to three-fourths of the oil gushing daily from the sea floor, company spokesman Robert Wine told The Associated Press.

The oil began spewing forth after a BP oil rig explosion April 20 and recently increased after officials cut the pipe carrying the flow as part of the latest containment effort.

BP believes the bigger cap will fit over more of the outflow pipe than the current cap, Wine said, but the change will allow the oil now being collected to again spew out into the Gulf during the changeover.

Wine acknowledged the frustration people must have when they look at the video feeds from undersea that show a lot of oil still flowing into the sea.

"We want to capture every drop of oil that is still leaking," he said. "We want to protect the coastline and repair the coastline that has been damaged."

Officials say the current cap is collecting more than 460,000 gallons of oil per day. BP continues to drill relief wells in hopes of a permanent solution.

Wine said the estimate of the proportion of gushing oil being collected is based on the government's contention that the containment cap is collecting 466,200 gallons of oil of the roughly 604,800 to 1,260,000 it believes is coming out daily.

Cutting the riser likely increased the flow of oil by 20 percent from the 504,000 to 1,050,000 gallons the government contends was coming out previously, Wine said.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the oil spill response, provided the updated oil-collection figure during a news conference earlier Monday at the White House.

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[Jolie Rouge]

FL Gov. hears how fishermen, tourism hurt by spill
Mitch Stacy, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 55 mins ago

ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. – Not a drop of oil from the massive Gulf spill has touched Florida's west coast beaches, but commercial fishermen and others who depend on the tourist trade here told Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday that they're hurting anyway.

Long-line commercial fishermen who catch grouper — a signature dish in Tampa Bay area restaurants — told Crist in Madeira Beach that closing areas of the Gulf to fishing because of the oil spill is threatening to cut into their hauls.

Later, at a large resort hotel in St. Pete Beach, a group of business owners, tourism officials and civic leaders implored the governor to spend some of the money provided by BP PLC on a TV advertising campaign in the Midwest and Northeast, where they say potential visitors are still canceling trips because of the perception that Florida's beaches are already fouled by oil.

Oil-wary Floridians did get one bit of good news Monday: A new Gulf current model issued by marine scientist Robert Weisberg at the University of South Florida shows prevailing winds during the next few days carrying the spill farther away from the Panhandle, where tar balls continue to wash up on the white sand beaches.

On Pensacola Beach, Attorney General Bill McCollum watched workers pick up tiny tar balls Monday, then blasted BP for spending money on ads to rehabilitate its image instead of pouring more money into cleanup efforts.

"I'm a bit angry out here today," McCollum told reporters.

The patchy oil slick now stretches from 100 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border to near the middle of the Florida Panhandle, and down to the open sea about 150 miles west of where Crist met with grim business owners and civic leaders at St. Pete Beach.

Keith Overton, senior vice president of the 800-room TradeWinds Island Resorts, which hosted the meeting, said the hotel has absorbed at least $50,000 in losses from cancellations tied to the oil spill. He suggested that the rest of the hotels and condos — which total 35,000 rooms in Pinellas County alone — are hurting similarly.

"It's a staggering number," said Overton, president of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. "And all this occurred without a single drop of oil touching our beaches."

D.T. Minich, executive director of the tourism bureau for St. Petersburg and Clearwater, told Crist his agency needs $2.5 million for ads to reach prospective visitors before they scrap their trips.

"We desperately need to be out in the markets where we can produce business, up in the Midwest and Northeast," Minich said. "That's where perceptions are the worst."

The ever-optimistic governor, who is running for the U.S. Senate as an independent, didn't promise anything but said he would do everything he could to make sure money from BP reaches them. The Gulf Oil Spill Economic Recovery Task Force, intended to help businesses recover losses from the spill, is scheduled to meet Wednesday in Tallahassee.

"It'll work out," Crist said. "It's going to be tough, it's going to be challenging, it is not going to be easy. We'll lose business, but we'll get through it."

Along the peninsula's west coast and in the Florida Keys, the state initiated its "Sentry Plan." Boats are being sent out to look for approaching oil to give targeted beaches at least 48 hours warning. Planes might also be used.

Crist said he expects to call a special legislative session "as early as July" to address the future of oil drilling off Florida's coasts.

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Florida Coast :

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Louisiana Coast

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:rolleyes:

[Jolie Rouge]

Well cap captures more oil, but outlook's gloomy
Harry R. Weber And Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers – 38 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The cap on the blown-out well in the Gulf is capturing a half-million gallons a day, or anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of the oil spewing from the bottom of the sea, officials said Monday. But the hopeful report was offset by a warning that the farflung slick has broken up into hundreds and even thousands of patches of oil that may inflict damage that could persist for years.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis, said the breakup has complicated the cleanup.

"Dealing with the oil spill on the surface is going to go on for a couple of months," he said at a briefing in Washington. But "long-term issues of restoring the environment and the habitats and stuff will be years."

Allen said the containment cap that was installed late last week is now collecting about 460,000 gallons of oil a day out of the approximately 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons believed to be spewing from the well a mile underwater. In a tweet, BP said it collected 316,722 gallons from midnight to noon Monday.

The amount of oil captured is being slowly ramped up as more vents on the cap are closed. Crews are moving carefully to avoid a dangerous pressure buildup and to prevent the formation of the icy crystals that thwarted a previous effort to contain the leak. The captured oil is being pumped to a ship on the surface.

"I think it's going fairly well," Allen said.

BP said it plans to replace the cap — perhaps later this month or early next month — with a slightly bigger one that will provide a tighter fit and thus collect more oil. It will also be designed to allow the company to suspend the cleanup and then resume it quickly if a hurricane threatens the Gulf later this season. The new cap is still being designed.

"It gives us much better containment than we've got" with the existing cap, said BP senior vice president Kent Wells.

BP and government officials acknowledged it is difficult to say exactly how much oil is spewing from the well, and thus how much is still flowing into the water. BP spokesman Robert Wine said the figures being discussed are estimates, some of which have been provided by the government.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences, suggested it is too early for anyone to claim victory. The spill, estimated at anywhere from 23 million gallons to 50 million, is already the biggest in U.S. history, dwarfing the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

"We're hopeful the thing is going to work, but hoping and actually working are two different things," Overton said. "They may have turned the corner, they may not have. We just don't know right now."

He said he doesn't believe BP will have turned the corner until it sees a significant flow from the well stopped. "And it is not entirely obvious to me that that is happening," Overton said.

"I do worry we are not removing as much oil as we ought to be getting," he added.

The "spillcam" video of the leak continued to show a big brown billowing cloud of oil and gas 5,000 feet below the surface.

In Washington, President Barack Obama sought to reassure Americans that "we will get through this crisis."

Later, he said he's been talking closely with Gulf Coast fishermen and various experts on BP's catastrophic oil spill and not for lofty academic reasons.

"I talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers — so I know whose ass to kick," the president said.

The salty words, part of Obama's recent efforts to telegraph to Americans his engagement with the crisis, came in an interview in Michigan with NBC's "Today" show.

"This will be contained," he said earlier. "It may take some time, and it's going to take a whole lot of effort. There is going to be damage done to the Gulf Coast, and there is going to be economic damages that we've got to make sure BP is responsible for and compensates people for."

But in a forecast that was by turns hopeful and gloomy, Allen indicated that cleaning up the mess could prove to be more complex than previously thought.

"Because what's happened over the last several weeks, this spill has disaggregated itself," Allen said. "We're no longer dealing with a large, monolithic spill. We're dealing with an aggregation of hundreds or thousands of patches of oil that are going a lot of different directions."

When finished, the new cap would be connected a riser pipe floating about 300 feet below the surface. Engineers say the riser would be deep enough to avoid damage from hurricanes that can roar over the Gulf of the Mexico, but shallow enough to allow returning drill ships to quickly reconnect to the flow.

Meanwhile, crews worked furiously to skim, scour and chemically disperse the substance from the water.

Tony Wood, the director of the National Spill Control School at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi, said BP's success at containing some of the leaking oil would not dramatically reduce the amount of time it would take to clean up the Gulf.

"We have a large volume still escaping," he said. "Cleanup levels up to twice as large as we have right now will go on for at least a year." He added: "The reality is that most of the spill, the vast majority of the spill, is still well offshore."

The oil — brick red in places, chocolate brown in others — has washed up on the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Some of the most enduring images of the disaster are of pelicans and other wildlife drenched in oil.

In a sweltering metal building in Fort Jackson, workers in biohazard suits were doing the time-consuming task of cleaning oiled brown pelicans and releasing them back into the wild. After getting 192 in the last six weeks, 86 were delivered on Sunday, the biggest rescue since the BP rig exploded on April 20, spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

"We did have someone faint today because of the heat," said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center. "But usually they come in about six or seven in the morning and stay until about six or seven at night."

A table is lined with tubs, bottles and even a microwave. In the tub an enormous pelican, turned almost black by the oil, sits stoically as workers pour a light vegetable oil over it. A process they humorously refer to as marinating, which has to be done before the birds can be washed.

Other than the oil, the pelicans have been healthy, said Heather Nevill, the veterinarian overseeing the process.

"They respond really well to the cleaning," Nevill said. "If we get them in time."

At Barataria Bay, La., just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River, large patches of oil the consistency of pancake batter floated in the still waters. A dead sea turtle caked in brownish-red oil lay splayed out with dragonflies buzzing by.

The Barataria estuary, which has become one of the hardest-hit areas, was busy with shrimp boats skimming up oil and officials in boats and helicopters patrolling the islands and bays to assess the state of wildlife and the movement of oil. On remote islands, pelicans, gulls, terns and herons were stained with oil.

Jody Haas, a tourist from Aurora, Ill., was among the few walking on tar-stained Pensacola Beach. Haas, who has visited the beach before, said it wasn't the same.

"It was pristine, gorgeous, white sand," she said. "This spot is light compared to some of the other spots farther down and it is just everywhere here. It's just devastating, awful."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100608/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AvfqGRG2X85FowY55kSmBGKs0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTNoMWZhb3VkBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNjA4L3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb 3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9 yeQRzbGsDd2VsbGNhcGNhcHR1

[Jolie Rouge]

In the Shadow of the Oil Monster on Grand Isle
[i]Steven Gray / Grand Isle – 21 mins ago
On Saturday afternoon, Chris Carmadelle stood at the counter of his seafood restaurant here, and waited for a tide of customers that never came. Oil from the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has infused the waters around this island village. Just the day before, President Obama made his second visit to the island since the crisis began and ate crawfish at Carmadelle's Seafood. Crawfish brought in from mainland Louisiana is all Carmadelle really has to sell. There's no fish, no shrimp. "That monster," Carmadelle said, referring to the oil, "is killing us."


Carmadelle, 51, has fished the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Barataria Bay "ever since I could walk." Hurricane Katrina destroyed his family's restaurant and bait shop. So he rebuilt. This was supposed to be the year of a true comeback. But now, he and Grand Isle (pop. 1,600) are at the center of the Gulf oil crisis. Many of its residents rely on commerce generated by the crews manning the oil rigs that sit within view of the beach. But the Obama Administration's six-month moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling is increasing angst. So is the question of whether the seafood industry will ever recover. (See pictures of wildlife affected by the oil disaster in the gulf of Mexico.)


The locals also wonder what the jobs and money offered by BP, the oil giant at the heart of the catastrophe, will ultimately amount to. BP has said it has spent some $84 million on claims to individuals and businesses across the Gulf Coast, and expects to send a second round of payments soon. "We're stuck in the middle," said Gilbert Stoufflet, 67, a retired oil contractor, as he sat inside Carmadelle's on Saturday. "So it's a tricky situation." (See pictures of the protests against BP.)


Nearly every house on Grand Isle, it seems, has a name: Milky Way. Sugar Shack II (but no Sugar Shack I), Paw's Dream. Just over the sand dunes lies the beach, sliced by thick, orange, rubber-like boom intended to keep oil-tainted water from moving further ashore. Dressed in white jumpsuits, gloves and boots, clean-up workers - many brought in by school buses each morning from New Orleans - are shoveling globs of greased-up sand into clear plastic bags. Just a few feet away, in Barataria Bay, workers are pulling out pelicans, fish and other wildlife slathered with oil.


On Oak Lane, many of the houses are built on stilts, standing between 12 and 15 feet in the air to withstand the constant floods. Terry Vargas, a third-generation shrimper, is building a shed here. It's the only work he can find now that shrimping and fishing are effectively banned nearby. One morning two weeks ago, he came back to shore with $1,400 worth of shrimp. The next day, authorities closed the waters near Grand Isle to shrimping and fishing - anticipating the oil-polluted water that's now slapping onto shore, "like peanut butter," he says. Vargas says he signed up to bring his boat to help BP's clean-up effort. But that means working out of Venice, La., at the base of the Mississippi River, about four hours away. It would mean leaving his wife, who is at home suffering from emphysema. Working out of Venice, he says, "makes no sense, because we've got oil right here" that needs to be cleaned up.


Still, many fishermen have taken the BP clean-up job. Vargas has received the first check of $5,000 BP is paying to captains of boats that aren't working. In a good year, he says, "I can make that in two nights." That's unlikely to cover his expenses. Or make up for the $20,000 he could have made in a month. The shrimping season typically extends from May through Labor Day. People here tend to start the season broke, having bought groceries, bait and other boat supplies on credit. That's not to mention the flood, wind and water insurance, which often tops $4,800 a year.


Vargas' brother, Percy, took his boat out to Venice to work for BP. His wife, Theresa, an assistant treasurer for the city of Grand isle, had crunched the numbers: If her husband sticks with the cleanup process through August, they could be paid about $250,000 - "more than we've ever made in our lives." But she is worried about the health risks, particularly involving the use of the chemicals BP is utilizing to disperse the oil. For weeks, Percy told Theresa that he was feeling fine. But last week, after hearing reports that several cleanup workers had been checked into hospitals, she drove to Venice. "I wanted to see him eye-to-eye, to know he was feeling well," she says. Thankfully, she says, he's doing OK. Nevertheless, whenever her husband has expressed doubt about the work, she tells him: Just hang in there. There are few alternatives, at this point. "They're dangling a carrot in front of our faces," she says.


Terry Vargas stood among the 12-foot-high stilts, and carefully thought about the hurricane season that's approaching. Hurricane Katrina sent sand into his living room. "If that oil comes ashore," he says, "it's all over. Just imagine: oil in my living room." People here know how to deal with hurricanes: They evacuate, then return, then rebuild. But this is a very different monster. And it may just lead to Grand Isle's undoing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100608/us_time/08599199474500;_ylt=AmfUc35j_nwKVCMXyarZJIdH2ocA;_ ylu=X3oDMTE1b2I5ajltBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmVsBH NsawNpbnRoZXNoYWRvd28-

[Jolie Rouge]

In the Shadow of the Oil Monster on Grand Isle
[i]Steven Gray / Grand Isle – 21 mins ago
On Saturday afternoon, Chris Carmadelle stood at the counter of his seafood restaurant here, and waited for a tide of customers that never came. Oil from the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has infused the waters around this island village. Just the day before, President Obama made his second visit to the island since the crisis began and ate crawfish at Carmadelle's Seafood. Crawfish brought in from mainland Louisiana is all Carmadelle really has to sell. There's no fish, no shrimp. "That monster," Carmadelle said, referring to the oil, "is killing us."


Carmadelle, 51, has fished the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Barataria Bay "ever since I could walk." Hurricane Katrina destroyed his family's restaurant and bait shop. So he rebuilt. This was supposed to be the year of a true comeback. But now, he and Grand Isle (pop. 1,600) are at the center of the Gulf oil crisis. Many of its residents rely on commerce generated by the crews manning the oil rigs that sit within view of the beach. But the Obama Administration's six-month moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling is increasing angst. So is the question of whether the seafood industry will ever recover. (See pictures of wildlife affected by the oil disaster in the gulf of Mexico.)


The locals also wonder what the jobs and money offered by BP, the oil giant at the heart of the catastrophe, will ultimately amount to. BP has said it has spent some $84 million on claims to individuals and businesses across the Gulf Coast, and expects to send a second round of payments soon. "We're stuck in the middle," said Gilbert Stoufflet, 67, a retired oil contractor, as he sat inside Carmadelle's on Saturday. "So it's a tricky situation." (See pictures of the protests against BP.)


Nearly every house on Grand Isle, it seems, has a name: Milky Way. Sugar Shack II (but no Sugar Shack I), Paw's Dream. Just over the sand dunes lies the beach, sliced by thick, orange, rubber-like boom intended to keep oil-tainted water from moving further ashore. Dressed in white jumpsuits, gloves and boots, clean-up workers - many brought in by school buses each morning from New Orleans - are shoveling globs of greased-up sand into clear plastic bags. Just a few feet away, in Barataria Bay, workers are pulling out pelicans, fish and other wildlife slathered with oil.


On Oak Lane, many of the houses are built on stilts, standing between 12 and 15 feet in the air to withstand the constant floods. Terry Vargas, a third-generation shrimper, is building a shed here. It's the only work he can find now that shrimping and fishing are effectively banned nearby. One morning two weeks ago, he came back to shore with $1,400 worth of shrimp. The next day, authorities closed the waters near Grand Isle to shrimping and fishing - anticipating the oil-polluted water that's now slapping onto shore, "like peanut butter," he says. Vargas says he signed up to bring his boat to help BP's clean-up effort. But that means working out of Venice, La., at the base of the Mississippi River, about four hours away. It would mean leaving his wife, who is at home suffering from emphysema. Working out of Venice, he says, "makes no sense, because we've got oil right here" that needs to be cleaned up.


Still, many fishermen have taken the BP clean-up job. Vargas has received the first check of $5,000 BP is paying to captains of boats that aren't working. In a good year, he says, "I can make that in two nights." That's unlikely to cover his expenses. Or make up for the $20,000 he could have made in a month. The shrimping season typically extends from May through Labor Day. People here tend to start the season broke, having bought groceries, bait and other boat supplies on credit. That's not to mention the flood, wind and water insurance, which often tops $4,800 a year.


Vargas' brother, Percy, took his boat out to Venice to work for BP. His wife, Theresa, an assistant treasurer for the city of Grand isle, had crunched the numbers: If her husband sticks with the cleanup process through August, they could be paid about $250,000 - "more than we've ever made in our lives." But she is worried about the health risks, particularly involving the use of the chemicals BP is utilizing to disperse the oil. For weeks, Percy told Theresa that he was feeling fine. But last week, after hearing reports that several cleanup workers had been checked into hospitals, she drove to Venice. "I wanted to see him eye-to-eye, to know he was feeling well," she says. Thankfully, she says, he's doing OK. Nevertheless, whenever her husband has expressed doubt about the work, she tells him: Just hang in there. There are few alternatives, at this point. "They're dangling a carrot in front of our faces," she says.


Terry Vargas stood among the 12-foot-high stilts, and carefully thought about the hurricane season that's approaching. Hurricane Katrina sent sand into his living room. "If that oil comes ashore," he says, "it's all over. Just imagine: oil in my living room." People here know how to deal with hurricanes: They evacuate, then return, then rebuild. But this is a very different monster. And it may just lead to Grand Isle's undoing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100608/us_time/08599199474500;_ylt=AmfUc35j_nwKVCMXyarZJIdH2ocA;_ ylu=X3oDMTE1b2I5ajltBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmVsBH NsawNpbnRoZXNoYWRvd28-

[Jolie Rouge]

Catastrophe in the Gulf: How Bad Could It Get?
By Bryan Walsh / Venice, La.

When Captain James Peters kicks his three engines into high gear, hold on to your hat — and your body too, if you don't want to end up overboard in the Mississippi Delta. Ordinarily on a clear June day like this one, Peters would be taking out a pack of eager sport fishermen from his home port in the southeastern Louisiana town of Venice, a community that proudly bills itself as the fishing capital of the world. But since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 — triggering a spill that is bleeding hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico — there hasn't been a whole lot of fishing in Louisiana. So instead, Peters has been escorting scientists and environmentalists like Maura Wood, the program manager for the National Wildlife Federation's Louisiana coastal program, to see the oil and its effects on the wetlands firsthand.

As the boat roars out of the marshes and into the open water southwest of Venice, Wood and her colleagues pass the oil and gas platforms scattered just beyond the Mississippi Delta, oddly birdlike with their long steel legs and tightly nestled mechanical bodies elevated above the water. It takes a while, but 16 miles (26 km) into the Gulf, Wood finds what she's looking for: a long band of reddish oil, thick enough to muffle the wake of Peters' boat. Up close, the petroleum — refracting the punishing Gulf sunlight — looks like a malignant lesion on the skin of the water. Wood puts on a respirator to protect herself from the fumes and drops a hand into the muck. It emerges with brown, sludgy crude clinging to the blue latex of her glove. "You can see how it adheres and what that would mean for the wildlife," she says. "This could mean the destruction of the fabric of life on the Gulf."

From the day the oil began spewing from energy giant BP's partially blown well thousands of feet below the surface of the Gulf, it was obvious that a major environmental disaster was unfolding. As the weeks passed and BP failed to cap the well, the worst-case scenarios just kept getting worse. By the end of May, according to the best estimates of the daily leakage rate, the well had poured at least 20 million gal. (75 million L) of crude into the Gulf, perhaps much more, making it far and away the worst oil spill in U.S. History — nearly double the output of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. But when BP's most recent attempt to stop the bleeding — the top-kill method — met with failure on May 29, it became clear that the crisis wouldn't end for weeks, maybe even months. Though BP announced it would try a cap over the well to divert the spewing oil, its officials admit that even if the new method is successful, about 20% of the oil will continue to leak, at least until a relief well is completed in August.

Already oil has stained some of the marshes of southern Louisiana — home to 40% of the coastal wetlands in the continental U.S. — disrupting the habitats of shorebirds, sea turtles and other threatened species. Beyond the shoreline, by June 2, Washington had banned fishing in more than 37% of the federal Gulf of Mexico waters — more than 88,000 sq. mi. (228,000 sq km) — a body blow to the region's valuable fishing industry. That's nearly double the area that was off-limits on May 18, an indication of where the trend lines are pointing. And many scientists believe that the greatest threat could be below the surface, where independent researchers say they've found evidence of miles-long plumes of oil potentially poisoning sea life and disrupting the marine food chain.

We take some comfort from the fact that we've faced similar crises before. We more or less survived Katrina, didn't we? But disasters like hurricanes tend to confine their devastation to one or two luckless cities. This time, everyone is going to suffer: 15% of the U.S.'s seafood comes from the Gulf; 14 million people live along a five-state stretch of coast in the path of the oil. BP's plummeting share price is driving down the rest of the energy sector and dragging on an already battered economy — a nationwide pocketbook effect that will only worsen as thousands of Gulf-region families dependent on fishing and tourism lose their livelihoods.

While BP and Washington fight over the brief cycles of stock prices and overnight polls, the larger effect will be a much longer-lasting burden. "This is something that will impact the environment on the shoreline and on the sea," says Doug Rader, the chief oceans scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). "And not just for years. This will be felt for generations."

The Kill That Didn't

The top-kill method was always going to be a long shot, the last in a series of fallbacks. BP's first attempt to stop the flow of oil involved using underwater robots to activate the stuck blowout preventer above the well, the shutoff valve that should have engaged automatically when the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded. When that failed, BP tried to lower a massive containment dome over the leak to catch the oil as it rose and then pump it to a ship on the surface. But the ultra-cold temperatures 5,000 ft. (1,500 m) below the surface — even in the balmy Gulf of Mexico — generated icy methane hydrate crystals that clogged the dome. A drainage tube 4 in. (10 cm) wide that was inserted into the leaking pipe failed as well, collecting just a fraction of the oil. In each case, BP and the government brain trust advising the company at its Houston command center were defeated by the sheer complexity of attempting such work so deep in the abyss. "The challenge here is working at 5,000 feet," said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, at a May 15 press conference — which raised the question of what BP was doing trying to operate at that depth in the first place.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1993664,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-nation-related



We take some comfort from the fact that we've faced similar crises before. We more or less survived Katrina, didn't we? But disasters like hurricanes tend to confine their devastation to one or two luckless cities.

I would like to know more about who wrote the article - because this statement makes it clear that despite the use of "WE" - he is NOT from around here.

[Jolie Rouge]

Despite that series of setbacks, BP officials seemed hopeful that the top-kill method — in which a dense slurry of clay and other minerals would be force-fed down the gullet of the blown-out well — would turn out differently. But that too came to naught as the pressure of the rising oil continually overcame the force of the incoming mud. The procedure was finally abandoned over concerns that continuing to drive thousands of pounds of dense mud into a bleeding wound could weaken the remaining pipes over the well, accelerating the leak. "This scares everybody — the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," a seemingly helpless Suttles said on May 29.

BP isn't without a backup to the backup. On June 2 the company undertook what is called a lower-marine-riser-package containment, or LMRP. Robots began slicing off the top of the well's riser pipe, preparing to place a containment cap over the well itself. In the short term — perhaps a few days from the time the pipe is cut to when the cap is in place — the effort could actually increase the flow of oil by 20%. But if the procedure is successful, which in this crisis would be a first for BP, the LMRP should capture what Suttles calls the "vast majority" of the oil flow until the relief wells that are now being drilled are completed. If it's not successful, things will get uglier still, since BP has decided that a contingency plan to try to attach a second blowout preventer atop the first may not be feasible. The idea has not been scrapped, but it has been tabled indefinitely.

For the people of Louisiana, on the front lines of a spill that will certainly swallow their summer and perhaps their way of life, the continued inability to stop the leak is a frightening possibility. "I can't describe for you how much that news hurt," says Glenn Dufrene, a 47-year-old truck and airboat driver from southeastern Louisiana, speaking of the top-kill failure. "This is the first moment I've felt like maybe we could lose some of our precious swamplands."

From the Gulf to the Potomac

The swampland that is Washington is feeling the effects of the BP mess too. On the one hand, President Obama confronts an emergency in which his presidential power is severely limited. The federal government simply doesn't have the know-how or equipment to cap the gusher; it would be a bit like asking BP to administer the Medicare program. Yet it's not clear that the public fully appreciates that reality. Disapproval of Obama's handling of the spill is steadily rising as a chorus of political and opinion leaders — from loyal Democrat James Carville to Washington veteran David Gergen — has smacked him for a supposedly listless and ineffective response.

It's mostly an unfair rap. Sure, there are some valid reasons for Obama to pay a political price. It was congressional, not presidential, pressure that forced BP to make its live images of the underwater oil flow available to the public. And it's apparent that neither Obama nor his senior team made regulatory rigor at the Minerals Management Service (MMS) a top priority; MMS director S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, an Obama appointee, resigned on May 27 after reports of poor management. All this is damning for a President who ran, in part, on the promise of a more competent government.

But many of Obama's critics are zinging him for reasons that have less to do with management than with stagecraft. Pundits have complained that the President hasn't displayed visceral public anger and that he isn't spending enough time camped out on the oily Gulf shores, hugging the stricken locals. Yes, displays of executive emotion can sometimes have a meaningful impact. Confident bully-pulpit words can calm financial markets, while angry ones can deter foreign enemies. But getting angry won't help Obama solve this problem. The President's job isn't to offer catharsis. It's to run the government and get things done. The first measure of success on that score will be simply to stop the bleeding well, which is why Obama may have been wise to resist seizing control of the whole operation from the industry that — for better or worse — is best positioned to do the job.

That said, Obama has shown some skill at calibrating his Administration's tone, allowing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to play pit bull with his threats to shove BP out of the way and his promise to keep his boot on the oil company's neck while maintaining presidential dignity when the press questioned the value of such rhetoric. "I would say we don't need to use language like that," the President said. But he hastened to add, "What we need is actions that make sure that BP is being held accountable. And that's what I intend to do."

The White House has started to get better at those much discussed optics too. On May 30, for example, climate-and-energy czar Carol Browner openly declared what most other folks had already realized when she conceded, "This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we've ever faced in this country." That admission signaled a change of course, one that would stress BP's culpability for the catastrophe and leave the company to twist in ways it hadn't before. The Administration benched Rear Admiral Mary Landry, who had helped run the spill response and served as Coast Guard spokeswoman, often using that position to laud BP's efforts thus far. On June 1, Admiral Thad Allen, Landry's boss and the lead federal official on scene, announced that he would no longer conduct joint briefings with BP. And the same day, the White House dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to meet with federal and state prosecutors in the Gulf, marking the start of a criminal investigation into the spill.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1993664-2,00.html#ixzz0qEgKieq2

because what we need is to place blame while the oil continues to gush and flow and corrode our waters, beaches, wetlands, marshlands, wildlife and way of life ... :slap:


In some quarters, the tough-guy approach had the public relations impact the White House evidently hoped it would. "Hey, BP, Meet FBI," read the June 2 headline of the New York Daily News. Obama himself, of course, took a more measured approach. "We have an obligation to investigate what went wrong and to determine what reforms are needed so that we never have the experience of a crisis like this again," he said.

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil in the Wetland

Whatever investigations are conducted and reforms enacted after the fact, the oil is going to continue to spill, damaging the Gulf and its coastline in ways scientists can't yet predict. Angelina Freeman knows just how precious the Louisiana wetlands are. A coastal scientist with the EDF now based in Washington, she did her graduate work at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge — she was actually supposed to be back in the state in May for graduation — and she had been involved in a program to help rebuild the region's wetlands, which have long been under threat from erosion and storms. But since the oil spill, Freeman has been cruising the bayous, taking water samples to send back to her professors. And she's been finding oil.

On a recent trip to Pass a Loutre, an eroding patch of Louisiana wetlands just half an hour southeast of Venice, Freeman saw the stain of oil wrapping around the Roseau cane that grows on every patch of land in the marshes. The roots of the grasses looked as if they had been dipped in chocolate, and the shore boom around the islands — part of the nearly 380 miles (600 km) of containment boom that have been laid so far to protect the Gulf shoreline — seemed to be holding the oil in as much as keeping it out. "You can see how far the oil has come," Freeman says, filling a small sample bottle. "These marshes are incredibly important to Louisiana, and if the Roseau cane dies back, you're losing the base of the wetlands."

By the end of May, those wetlands were under attack, though subtly at first. This wasn't the black tide seen after the Exxon Valdez spill, when crude coated the rocky beaches of Alaska's Prince William Sound. Rather, oil carried by the shifting ocean currents and winds would suddenly materialize in one section of marshland, only to vanish the next day, leaving responders, scientists and photographers alike chasing around the vast and intricate coastline, following up reports of oil strikes. But once oil penetrates the wetlands — a nursery and feeding ground for birds and marine species alike — it doesn't take much to have a serious impact. Imagine a sponge soaked in oil. Now imagine trying to get it out. The oil is "like coagulated Hershey's chocolate syrup," says Kraig Shook, a Florida native visiting Louisiana to peddle an oil-absorbent powder. "They can't let that stuff come in here."

Especially not now. Late spring is the reproductive season for scores of species in and around the wetlands, and young animals are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of oil. The marshes are vital to the life cycles of commercially viable species like shrimp. The plentiful birds of the wetlands — from natives like the brown pelicans seen skimming over the cane to migratory species like the sanderlings that use the wetlands as a vital rest and feeding stop — can encounter oil as they dive into the water for food. Even if a light sheen doesn't kill an adult, slicked birds can take oil back to the nest, destroying eggs or suffocating the young. The International Bird Rescue Research Center, a California-based outfit hired by BP to clean affected fowl, is already treating one to four pelicans a day, and it expects that number to rise considerably as the oil keeps flowing. Oiled birds that are found will most likely represent only a fraction of the number actually claimed by the crude. Most will die at sea or on the inaccessible reaches of the coastline. "Many of our worst fears are coming true," says Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "No bird that depends on oil-impacted wetlands or water is going to be completely safe."

BP, which has bungled so much since the crisis began, seems to understand how precious the marshes are — or at least how important it is to look as if it understands — and along with the Coast Guard, it has ramped up its efforts to protect and clean the coastline in recent days. While Freeman took samples near Pass a Loutre, nearly a dozen boats could be seen at work laying more boom and skimming oil from the water's surface. By the beginning of June, BP was bringing in "flotels" — essentially freight containers on large rafts converted to hold bunk beds — to serve as residences for the hundreds of cleanup workers it was hiring. But for some locals, that wasn't nearly enough. Led by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, they are calling for large-scale dredging operations that will create artificial barriers called sand berms, which could physically block the oil in the countless open channels off the Mississippi Delta. "The booms alone can't do the job in these really wide gaps," says P.J. Hahn, the coastal zone management director of Plaquemines Parish, which includes Venice. Berms, he says, "are the only way to capture the volume of oil that's coming this way effectively enough."

But many scientists and members of the federal response team are skeptical that the $350 million berm plan will really work. They worry that rushing sand-berm construction without a full environmental assessment could do more harm than good. Decades of oil and gas exploration and digging new canals for navigation had steadily worn down the wetlands well before the Deepwater Horizon accident occurred. Even temporary berms could interfere with the natural tide flows of the delta — potentially wreaking havoc on wildlife that depend on a reliable tidal pattern — and possibly damage the integrity of natural barrier islands. Jindal sent the federal government a permit request to begin building more than 100 miles (160 km) of berms shortly after the spill began, but Washington hesitated to rubber-stamp his plan. "We're not averse to attempting this as a prototype," said Allen on May 27. But "there are a lot of doubts about whether this is a valid oil-spill-response plan."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1993664-3,00.html#ixzz0qEhWX4co

[Jolie Rouge]

It may not be a valid oil-spill-response plan, but the sand berms have the benefit of being big and visible — a comfort for the worried and angry natives of southeastern Louisiana, watching as their land and their livelihood are taken away from them. At the annual Plaquemines Parish seafood festival over Memorial Day weekend — where the turnout was strong despite concerns about the safety of oysters and shrimp — locals wore T-shirts that read, "Dredge, baby, dredge." In the end, Allen seemed to agree with the sentiment — late on June 2 he announced that he had approved five additional sand berms and that BP would foot the bill. Anything, it seems, is better than waiting helplessly for the oil to envelop the wetlands completely. "When it does, you try to imagine how much marshland and animal life it might kill," says Cody Mouton, a boat captain from north of Venice involved in the cleanup. "We're talking about years, easily, to recover from that."

The Long Term

The truth is, of course, that no one can begin to know what the final toll might be if the spill continues for weeks, in part because no one knows exactly what's happening to the oil right now. According to the latest government estimate, 12,000 to 19,000 bbl. of oil are leaking from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico each day. Yet the size of the surface oil slick — a radius of 200 miles (320 km), though the exact size and location fluctuates daily — doesn't match the sheer amount of crude fouling the Gulf. That's partly because some of it has been burned off or has evaporated away. But it's also the result of BP's use of nearly 1 million gal. (3.8 million L) of chemical dispersants, sprayed onto the surface and injected directly into the wellhead to break up the crude and speed the evaporation process. Dispersed oil tends not to float but instead falls below the surface and drifts at mid-depths, meaning that a lot of what's been spilled so far is invisible. "So much of it is still hidden," says Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University and one of the most outspoken researchers on the spill. "Something is missing."

Slowly, that something is turning up — and what it's doing is not pretty. On May 27, scientists from the University of South Florida (USF) returned from a six-day voyage into the Gulf with evidence that huge plumes of oil — broken into bits and beads by the dispersants — were moving thousands of feet beneath the surface in a great toxic cloud. That underwater mix of oil and dispersants could poison fish larvae, with cascading effects up the food chain, and damage the corals found in some parts of the Gulf. "The whole water column from the top to the bottom is getting it on the chin," says the EDF's Rader.

That's not what BP seems to believe. On May 30, while touring a BP staging area for cleanup workers in Louisiana, CEO Tony Hayward told reporters there was "no evidence" that oil was massing underwater. "The oil is on the surface," he said. "There aren't any plumes." Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is less sure but says she's still awaiting firm data on underwater oil plumes.

Researchers from USF aren't the only ones to report finding oil plumes beneath the surface. Scientists from LSU and the University of Southern Mississippi have done so as well. And on the same day as Hayward's denial, scientists from the University of Georgia (UGA) aboard an ongoing research voyage to the spill found direct evidence of oil in water samples collected nearly 1,000 meters below the surface. "Seeing is believing," blogged UGA marine scientist Samantha Joye. After nearly a month of denials and obfuscation by BP on the technical details of the spill, Joye's words carry a lot more weight than Hayward's.

If the well continues to spew for weeks more — and BP continues to apply chemical dispersants at the site of the spill — those underwater plumes will likely continue to grow. If oil hits the shorelines and wetlands and remains underwater as well, no amount of rescue and cleanup efforts will protect sea life. It took years for the fertile salmon fisheries of Prince William Sound to recover from the Exxon Valdez spill, in part because fish that were juveniles at the time of the disaster were severely affected, devastating fish populations for generations. The Gulf spill — far larger and far longer — could be far worse. "We have no idea what an oil spill like this does to the most productive time of the most productive part of the Gulf," says MacDonald. "None."

In some ways that is true of the entire Gulf ecosystem, from shoreline to deep sea. The environment here has been under stress before — the 1979 Ixtoc 1 blowout off the coast of Mexico spilled 3 million to 5 million bbl. of oil into the Gulf — and has bounced back. Like New Orleans itself, the inevitable city in the impossible place, the Gulf coastline has maintained a tenuous balance over the years, with incredible wildlife existing next to intense exploitation of underwater oil. The Gulf is the nation's gas station and its fishing grounds, and until now, the people of Louisiana have enjoyed both, just as Americans have demanded cheap fossil fuels along with blue skies, clear water and crawfish étouffée. But if we fail to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. History — and fail to learn from the country's biggest environmental catastrophe — we may find that we can't have everything we want any longer.

— With reporting by Tim Padgett / Venice, La.; and Michael Crowley / Washington

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1993664-4,00.html#ixzz0qEiaZpdH


View video "New Orleans Artists Turn Katrina Wreckage into Oil Spill Art."
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,88205786001_1992197,00.html

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1993664-4,00.html#ixzz0qEjY2kgF




“The ties that bind. Remember Rahm Emanuel’s rent-free D.C. apartment?

The owner: A BP adviser”

Follow the bouncing ball… http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/rahm-emanuel-bp-gul-oil-spill.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama lashes BP chief, media over oil disaster
by Stephen Collinson 2 hrs 52 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama said he would fire BP CEO Tony Hayward for flippant comments and lashed out at media "talking heads," ratcheting up his rhetoric on the 50th day of the US oil disaster.

As Obama Tuesday apparently sought to contain further political damage over the greatest environmental calamity in US history, his top disaster aide reported more progress capturing oil spewing from a ruptured undersea well.

Hayward, whose sardonic English tones and comments, including a prediction that the Gulf spill would be "very, very modest," have irked some Americans, found himself directly in Obama's cross-hairs. "He wouldn't be working for me after making any of those statements," Obama said on the NBC "Today Show" program, following criticism his public anger has been too tepid.

Hayward has since apologized for his remarks.

Obama also revealed that he had not personally spoken to Hawyard, since an explosion on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, saying there would be little point. "When you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's going to say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions."

National incident coordinator Admiral Thad Allen however says he frequently speaks to the BP chief, seeking information, or ordering specific steps in the disaster mitigation effort.

Obama, who made the latest of his three trips to the disaster zone last week, insisted he had no time for playing politics as he dealt with the spill -- though his comments seem increasingly to have a political cast.

He said in the interview that he was looking for some "ass to kick" as recriminations mount and oil reaps a dreadful toll on seabirds, pristine Louisiana wetlands, teeming fishing grounds and idyllic Gulf of Mexico beaches.

He also rejected a media critique that he had been too slow to respond, or was not animated enough in his public comments. "I'm going to push back hard on this because I think that this is an idea that got into folks' heads and the media is running with it. I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," he said.

Commentators have drawn parallels between Obama's handling off the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, and his predecessor George W. Bush's botched management of Hurricane Katrina which devastated the same coastline in 2005.

But Obama scoffed at suggestions he should replace his cool demeanor for an orchestrated temper tantrum to appease his critics. "This is not theater," Obama added. "I don't always have time to perform for the benefit of the cable shows," he said.

Political warning signs over the disaster are proliferating.

A recent CBS News poll showed only thirty-eight percent of Americans approve of the way the administration is dealing with the spill.

A Washington Post/ABC survey revealed more Americans disapprove of Obama's response to the oil spill than disapprove of Bush's Katrina performance.

But the CBS poll also showed that 68 percent disapprove of BP's showing, giving an insight in the administration's motivation for attacking the energy giant, given that political blame always seeks a resting place.

Political rumblings over the spill deepened as the undersea effort went on to capture spewing oil, and environmentalists tried to rescue wildlife choking in crude.

Allen said BP engineers had captured 14,842 barrels of oil over the last 24 hours from a containment cap placed over the well which blew on April 20, a significant increase from Monday's tally.

It is still unclear how much oil is spewing out of the busted wellhead, and officials have warned they will not be able to syphon off all of the excess crude until relief wells are dug -- likely not until August.

"We've gone from about 6,000 barrels up to almost 15,000," Allen said.

As part of a previous pledge to fund six berms in the Louisiana barrier islands project, at a cost of 360 million dollars, BP announced it would make an immediate payment of 60 million dollars to the state of Louisiana.

The administration has also ordered the firm not to "nickel and dime" the people of the region who are seeking compensation for lost livelihoods.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100608/ts_afp/usoilpollutionenvironment/print;_ylt=AlfVrRmiwnugrofdS2FpciCGOrgF;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--



He also rejected a media critique that he had been too slow to respond, or was not animated enough in his public comments. "I'm going to push back hard on this because I think that this is an idea that got into folks' heads and the media is running with it. I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," he said.

Please refer to the begining of this thread .... he was down here "a month ago"... sadly the disaster was May 21 and it was some time before DC even noticed. :rolleyes:


Obama's learning 'whose ass to kick' in oil mess
2 hrs 22 mins ago

Is President Obama bowing to criticism that he hasn't shown enough emotion and outrage about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? In an interview with the "Today" show's Matt Lauer on Tuesday morning, the president offered his bluntest response yet about the disaster, telling Lauer he's been talking to experts about "whose ass to kick" when it comes to responsibility for the mess. "I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf. A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be," Obama said, defending his administration's handling of the spill. "And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

Watch that segment of the interview here
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/37561786#37561786


That's a pretty sharp response for a president known for his cool-headed approach to situations. In recent weeks, as Obama has been assailed for not being expressive enough in his response to the spill, White House officials has defended his reaction by suggesting that voters would prefer to see concrete actions over empty "method acting."

Yet administration officials are not ignorant of polls showing the nation less than thrilled with Obama's handling of the Gulf. According to the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, more than two-thirds of those polled, 69 percent, disapprove of the federal government's handling of the spill. That's higher than the outrage over the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100608/pl_ynews/ynews_pl2451;_ylt=ApsfMaJE6f0Jzfz.FpKmDm2s0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTJjZWVubGcxBGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwNjA4L3lu ZXdzX3BsMjQ1MQRwb3MDNgRzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGFyBH NsawNvYmFtYTM5c2xlYXI-

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil spill facts seem as murky as stricken waters
Henry And Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writers – 36 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The cap over a broken BP wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is collecting more gushing crude day by day, but that's about the extent of the details known as authorities try to pinpoint how much oil is escaping, where it's going and what harm it will cause.

The recently installed containment cap on the stricken BP wellhead is helping to limit the leak, collecting more than 620,000 gallons of oil Monday, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Tuesday in Washington. Still, underwater video feeds continue to show a dark geyser.

"I have never said this is going well," said Allen, who's monitoring the response effort for the government. "We're throwing everything at it that we've got. I've said time and time again that nothing good happens when oil is on the water."

Authorities had earlier reported that the cap collected around 460,000 gallons Sunday and that it was capturing anywhere from a third to three-quarters of the oil spewing out after a damaged riser pipe was cut as part of the containment effort, increasing the flow as a side effect.

A member of the Coast Guard team that's trying to determine how much oil is still leaking told The Associated Press it's possible that estimates the team will generate could be a bit higher than current government estimates.

The team member, University of Texas engineering professor Paul Bommer, said he understands why people might wonder why BP didn't try the cap sooner, especially now that it appears to be doing its job.

"Hindsight is always 20/20," Bommer said. "I think we have to give some credence to the notion they were trying to make things better without making things worse."

BP announced plans recently to swap out the current cap with a bigger one next month that can capture more oil, raising questions about why such plans weren't in place at first as a backup.

"I know it takes some time to fabricate these things," Bommer said. "It's not something you just go to Wal-Mart and buy."

The success of the containment system siphoning off oil from the leaking well, which has produced the nation's largest oil spill, is limited by how tightly the cap sits over it and the ability of ships on the surface to process the oil it traps.

To deal with more oil, BP PLC is preparing to use an EverGreen Burner made by Schlumberger Ltd., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen Harris said. The device turns oil and gas into a vapor that is burned.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the company has not decided whether to use the burner.

Bommer's team, the Flow Rate Technical Group, includes federal scientists, independent experts and academic researchers, and its projections could ultimately be used to penalize BP judging by how much oil escapes.

BP CEO Tony Hayward is scheduled to testify before a congressional committee June 17 about the company's role in a rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers, and the ensuing spill.

Hayward enraged many when he later said, "I'd like my life back," and is sure to receive pointed questions from lawmakers about the cause of the accident and the response to it.

Allen said Tuesday that he would meet with BP to assess how well it is handling claims for relief from people hurt by the spill.

The aim is "to see if we need to provide any oversight," he said, noting that "working claims is not something that's part of BP's organizational competence here."

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley called out the National Guard on Tuesday to help spread the word among coastal residents that they could ask BP for compensation, noting that few have applied. Guardsmen will go through communities for three weeks telling people about the claims process, he said.

Tests have confirmed plumes of oil in low concentrations as far as 3,300 feet below the surface and more than 40 miles northeast of the well site, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said Tuesday.

On the surface, oil is washing up thick in some areas, leaving others relatively unscathed, and playing hide-and-seek in others. The spill's fickle nature was evident this week near the Alabama-Florida state line.

On the Alabama side on Monday, oil-laden seaweed littered beaches for miles, and huge orange globs stained the sands. But at Perdido Key, on the Florida side, the sand was white and virtually crude-free.

On Tuesday morning, though, the Alabama side looked markedly better, with calmer seas, signs that cleanup crews had visited and sticky clumps of oil no longer clinging to washed-up seaweed.

At hard-hit Barataria Bay, La., just west of the mouth of the Mississippi River, crews ramped up coastal restoration efforts that were already under way, and work is planned in coming days with BP's announcement that it would begin paying.

As the sun rose there Tuesday, marsh islands teemed with oily brown pelicans and crude-stained white ibis. The birds inadvertently used their oiled beaks like paint brushes, dabbing at their wings, as the brown goo bled into their feathers.

Some struggled to fly, fluttered and fell, while others just sat and tried to clean themselves, sqwawking and flapping their wings. Dolphins bobbed in the oily sheen nearby.

Fishing guide Dave Marino looked out over the water in disbelief and disgust. The 41-year-old firefighter has been fishing these waters for 20 years.

"I'm an optimistic guy, so hopefully it doesn't just overwhelm the entire system," he said. "But if it continues to go on and the oil keeps coming in, eventually the balance is going to tip. Then what happens? Is it all over?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100608/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill could mark a turning point for Obama
John Hughes – Tue Jun 8, 10:12 am ET

Provo, Utah – When President Bush clambered up on a pile of rubble after 9/11, seized a bullhorn, put his arm around a firefighter, and rallied the nation, it was a crowning moment of his presidency.

When he ill-advisedly flew over the Katrina disaster of 2005 and appeared disconnected with the agony of New Orleans, it was, in the view of many historians, the beginning of his presidency’s decline.

President Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil disaster could be a similar turning point. Despite his uneasy press conference and statements proclaiming he is in charge, despite visits to the scene to talk with officials rather than distraught commercial fishermen, his demeanor has come across as clinical rather than inspirational.

Even such well-wishers as Louisiana Democratic guru James Carville and former presidential adviser David Gergen have wrung their hands over his seeming disconnectedness. Mr. Carville wanted the president to fire officials and indict BP. (A criminal probe has now begun.) Mr. Gergen complained that if the United States had handled World War II like the Gulf oil spill, “We’d all be speaking German.”

An inexplicable moment in a presidential press conference came when the president seemed unaware whether Elizabeth Birnbaum, the top official in his oil-industy-monitoring agency, had resigned or been fired.

Mr. Obama’s standing is not helped by the fact that the Gulf oil disaster coincides with a kind of perfect political storm of problems for him at home and abroad.

At home there is tawdry revelation that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a take-no-prisoners political operative, had co-opted former President Clinton to offer favors to Congressman Joe Sestak in a failed bid to secure his withdrawal from Pennsylvania’s Senate primary race. The aim was to clear the way for incumbent Arlen Specter.

Old Guard Democrats, and even some jaded journalistic pundits, proclaim that this attempted bribery is normal business practice in Washington.

But that is exactly the president’s problem. He was the knight on the white horse who won the election on a pledge to change Washington’s sleazier ways. If he sanctioned the Emanuel initiative, it was a betrayal of that promise. If Mr. Emanuel acted without the president’s knowledge, then Emanuel should have lost the president’s trust, and possibly his job.

Meanwhile the Obama presidency is beset by:

•10 percent unemployment.

•A reputation for loading up future generations with debt.

•A failure, not entirely his fault, to achieve the bipartisan concord with Republicans he promised during his election campaign.

•A messy quarrel with Arizona over immigration because the US Congress has consistently declined to enact comprehensive immigration legislation. Nor is Congress displaying the mettle to do so soon.

Nor is there a whisper of enthusiasm for tackling another major looming challenge, the bankruptcy of Social Security. Mr. Bush courageously took a crack at this, despite all the political negatives. His effort foundered in congressional timidity.

Abroad there is the distinct probability that Iran will acquire the wherewithal to develop a nuclear weapon. And North Korea may kiss off all attempts to disarm its nuclear weapons. This does not augur well for the Korean Peninsula.

China is reveling in its new economic, financial, political, and naval power, and treats with case-by-case whimsy the Obama administration’s requests to be helpful.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a thorn in the Obama administration’s Middle East policy, and Arabs and Israelis will only engage in mystical explorations if they don’t actually have to meet with each other.

If Obama is to fulfill the bright promise that many Americans saw in his soaring campaign oratory, he needs a presidential retreat of the kind Jimmy Carter ordained at a low point in his presidency. Failed policies should be revised. Heads should roll. “Change” should become a reality and not a campaign slogan

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100608/cm_csm/306502;_ylt=Au3chfrUcOs6I1I.iRsiJ1Gs0NUE;_ylu=X3oD MTFlaTY5ZHZiBHBvcwMyMTYEc2VjA2FjY29yZGlvbl9vcGluaW 9uBHNsawNndWxmb2lsc3BpbGw-

[Jolie Rouge]

World Oceans Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Oceans Day was officially declared by the United Nations as June 8th each year beginning in 2009. The concept was proposed on 8 June 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and it had been unofficially celebrated every year since then as World Ocean Day.

World Oceans Day is an opportunity every year to honor the world's ocean, celebrate the products the ocean provides, such as seafood, as well as marine life itself for aquariums, pets, and also a time to appreciate its own intrinsic value. The ocean also provides sea-lanes for international trade. Global pollution and over-consumption of fish have resulted in drastically dwindling population of the majority of species.

The Ocean Project, working in partnership with the World Ocean Network, has been promoting WOD since 2003 with its network of over 900 organizations and others throughout the world. These groups have been working to build greater awareness of the crucial role of the ocean in our lives and the important ways people can help. World Oceans Day provides an opportunity to get directly involved in protecting our future, through a new mindset and personal and community action and involvement – beach cleanups, educational programs, art contests, film festivals, sustainable seafood events, and other planned activities help to raise consciousness of how our lives depend on the oceans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Oceans_Day

To celebrate "World Ocean Day" today BP announced : Gulf oil leak may be bigger then we thought ....."

Gulf oil leak may be bigger than BP says
By Ray Henry, Harry R. Weber And Seth Borenstein, AP Writers 1 hr 30 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – While BP is capturing more oil from its blown-out well with every passing day, scientists on a team analyzing the flow said Tuesday that the amount of crude still escaping into the Gulf of Mexico may be considerably greater than what the government and the company have claimed.

Their assertions — combined with BP's rush to build a bigger cap and its apparent difficulty in immediately processing all the oil being collected — have only added to the impression that the company is still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe.

The cap that was put on the ruptured well last week collected about 620,000 gallons of oil on Monday and another 330,000 from midnight to noon on Tuesday and funneled it to a ship at the surface, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the crisis. That would mean the cap is capturing better than half of the oil, based on the government's estimate that around 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea.

The undersea efforts came as BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles struck an upbeat tone about the anticipated progress of the oil containment in the next week. Suttles told The Associated Press in a stop in Alabama that the arrival of a second vessel in the coming days to help pump the oil from the deepwater gusher could help engineers make even more progress, even as others continued to criticize BP over its handling of the disaster.

A team of researchers and government officials assembled by the Coast Guard and run by the director of the U.S. Geological Survey is studying the flow rate and hopes to present its latest findings in the coming days on what is already the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

In an interview with The Associated Press, team member and Purdue University engineering professor Steve Wereley said it was a "reasonable conclusion" but not the team's final one to say that the daily flow rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million gallons. "BP is claiming they're capturing the majority of the flow, which I think is going to be proven wrong in short order," Wereley said. "Why don't they show the American public the before-and-after shots?"

He added: "It's strictly an estimation, and they are portraying it as fact."

Other members of the team also told AP they expect their findings to show higher numbers than the current government estimate, but they weren't ready to say how much higher.

To install the containment device snugly, BP engineers had to cut away the twisted and broken well pipe. That increased the flow of oil, similar to what happens when a kink is removed from a garden hose. BP and others warned that would happen, and the government said the increase amounted to about 20 percent.

Asked about the containment effort and the uncertainties in estimating how much oil is escaping, Allen said: "I have never said this is going well. We're throwing everything we've got."

Paul Bommer, a University of Texas petroleum and geosystems engineering professor and member of the flow rate team, said cap seems to have made a "dent" in reducing the flow, but there is still a lot of oil coming out. That seemed clear from the underwater "spillcam" video, which continued to show a big plume of gas and oil billowing into the water.

The current equipment collecting the oil being brought to the surface is believed to be nearing its daily processing capacity. BP said it will boost capacity by bringing in a floating platform it believes can process most of the flow, and believes the extra pumping power can help reduce the spill even more by early next week, when President Barack Obama is scheduled to make his fourth visit to the Gulf since the disaster began.

The company also said it will use a device that vaporizes and burns off oil while working to design a new cap that can capture more crude.

Suttles initially said that the spill should be reduced to a "relative trickle" by Monday or Tuesday. BP later sought to clarify the comments by saying that even though the company is optimistic it can make measurable progress in the next week in reducing the flow, it will take more time to reach the point that the spill amounts to a trickle.

In the seven weeks since the oil rig explosion that set off the catastrophe, BP has had to improvise at every turn. The most recent government estimates put the total amount of oil lost at 23.7 million to 51.5 million gallons.

"I think virtually everybody from BP to the state to the Coast Guard was caught flat-footed and did not expect a spill of this magnitude," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University. "Everybody has been playing catch-up."

When asked why BP did not have containment systems on standby in case of a leak, BP spokesman Robert Wine said there was no reason to think an accident on this scale was likely.

"It's unprecedented," he said. "That's why these caps weren't there before."

Kenneth Arnold, an offshore drilling consultant and engineer, said the reason a bigger cap wasn't installed first was that BP probably wanted to start with what it could do quickly, which he said makes sense. He said BP has been working several solutions all along in parallel and deploying them as they can.

"They haven't been waiting for one to fail and then employing the next one," Arnold said.

He added: "The idea you can wave your arm at this and come to a magical solution is just from someone who doesn't understand the problem. We as a nation are used to instant gratification. There is a problem. We want someone to fix it tomorrow. Things are not always that easy."

Some answers may emerge next week, when BP CEO Tony Hayward will make his first appearance before Congress to answer questions in what will probably be a heated session, given the anger directed at BP.

The debate over the flow rate came as workers in bulldozers piled sand 6 feet high along barrier islands bordering Louisiana to protect the environmentally fragile areas from the spill, which has already coated islands and pelican rookeries in thick, brown, sticky crude.

"This is finally something that can help," fishing guide Dave Marino said of the sand barrier effort. "It looks like this is something that may work."

Attempts to skim the oil progressed as well. Boats fanned out across the Gulf, dragging boom in their wake in an attempt to corral the oil. But it's an enormous task.

In some spots, the oil is several inches thick and forms a brown taffy-like goo that sticks to everything it touches.

John Young, chairman of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish Council, said additional equipment has been ordered and more dredgers will be moving into the area soon, along with barges that will help block the passes.

"It's nice that BP has put up the money, but they need to ramp up not only the manpower but the equipment out there because we're losing the battle," Young said. "Unfortunately, we're on day 50 and it's too little too late, but I guess it's better late than never."

Meanwhile, researchers are beginning to obtain a clearer picture of the spill as they analyze water samples. For example, marine scientists found a 100-foot-thick layer of oil 1,300 feet below the surface about 45 miles from the well site. BP said in a written statement that while there is oil in the water, the findings so far do not support the existence of undersea plumes.

And officials in the Florida Panhandle are posting signs warning beachgoers not to swim or fish off a six-mile stretch of oil-fouled beaches near the Alabama state line — the first time such restrictions have been imposed in the state since the spill began.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100609/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AiX__EDxtErdEqlcfPxtWlSs0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTFlMTMzanI1BHBvcwM2NgRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9 uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNndWxmb2lsbGVha20-

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama's getting really, really mad — or is he?
Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jun 8, 7:11 pm ET

WASHINGTON – First he was going to make BP pay for the Gulf oil mess. Then he declared himself in charge. Now he's trying to find out "whose ass to kick" and making clear he'd fire BP's chief if only he could.

President Barack Obama is talking ever tougher as the Gulf oil spill crisis drags on, the public's patience wears thin and the peril to his presidency increases. With pressure building on Obama to fix the crisis, the White House said he'll be heading back to the scene, spending next Monday and Tuesday inspecting oil damage in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Obama's salty comments broadcast on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday raised questions about his escalating anger and angst — are they real or calculated for political effect?

Long viewed as a political positive, Obama's unflappable temperament may be working against him now. Despite his claims of being on top of things from Day One, Obama has come under fire even within his own party, accused of being slow to recognize the political danger of the spill and for appearing somewhat detached. "I think it's hard for him to get angry. His anger obviously is motivated by the fact that there's increasing anger in the country," said Thomas E. Cronin, a political scientist at Colorado College and co-author of a book "The Paradoxes of the American Presidency" that examines how difficult it is for presidents to live up to expectations.

"We want the president to be like us but to be better than us. So we hold the president to a higher standard," said Cronin.

Obama's dialing up his anger thermostat comes as a new Washington Post poll shows nearly half of those surveyed — 48 percent — now saying he does not understand the problems of people like them, the highest of his presidency.

And a new Pew Research Center poll shows a sharp rise in the number of people who say Obama's policies are making the economy worse rather than better. "There are increasing doubts about what he's doing. And he's got a world of troubles here, from BP to the economy to last week's disappointing jobs report," said Pew pollster Andy Kohut.

After earlier suggesting repeatedly that cleaning up the spill was BP's full responsibility, Obama said at a May 27 news conference that he accepted responsibility for saving the situation. He also assailed a "scandalously close relationship" between Big Oil and its government regulators.

He said his daughter Malia had asked him that morning: "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

A few days later, he called BP's announcement of the failure of its "top kill" attempt to stop the leak "as enraging as it is heartbreaking." Last Friday on his third trip to the Gulf Coast since the April 20 rig explosion, Obama worked to channel public anger toward BP. "I don't want them nickel-and-diming people down here," he said.

Then, in an interview recorded Monday and broadcast Tuesday, Obama said, "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers — so I know whose ass to kick."

He also criticized BP CEO Tony Hayward for such insensitive remarks as "I want my life back," and the Gulf is "a big ocean" so "the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest."

"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," Obama said.

As stock values for oil companies with ties to the Gulf tumbled in early trading Tuesday after Obama's remarks, Oppenheimer & Co. energy analyst Fadel Gheit said the president had fueled speculation about potential liabilities of such companies. "I thought the comment was both unfortunate and un-presidential," Gheit said. "This is tea party territory."

Most of them recovered later in the day, but BP shares closed down 5 percent.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs recently assured skeptical reporters that he'd personally seen the president express "rage" over the spill. When pressed for details, Gibbs spoke of Obama's "clenched jaw" and an order at a staff meeting to "plug the damn hole."

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Gibbs said Obama does not intend to "get mad just to get mad," that that wasn't his style. Instead, Gibbs depicted Obama's disposition as "reserved Midwestern," calm in a crisis even when furious about the problem. "He got this from his grandmother," Gibbs said.

Obama isn't the first president or vice president to use locker room talk, and it always comes off as a little jarring. Vice President George H.W. Bush said after a 1984 vice presidential debate with Democrat Geraldine Ferraro "We tried to kick a little ass last night." As president six years later he said of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein: "If we get into an armed situation, he's going to get his ass kicked."

"If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass," President Jimmy Carter said at a dinner with congressman in 1980, referring to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's preparations for a Democratic challenge. President Ronald Reagan once told his staff, "I've had it up to my keister with these leaks."

GOP presidential nominee and then Texas Gov. George W. Bush at a 2000 Labor Day rally in Illinois told running mate Dick Cheney that a certain New York Times reporter was "a major league a------" and Cheney responded, "Oh yeah, he is, big time."

The men involved in those incidents generally thought their comments were private. Obama clearly knew he was talking to the world.

Wayne Fields, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies presidential rhetoric, said Obama's comments "feel out of character" and in response to "lots of pressure right now to be a part of the rhetoric of plain speaking and anger — which isn't his style."

Part of Obama's attraction, Fields said, "was that he wasn't going to be swept away by forces beyond his control. His remarks on the "Today" show sounded a note of frustration. I think the `clenched jaw' is a much better approach for him to take."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100608/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_getting_tough;_ylt=AlNfZzYQ02Lk0uiVEzOsPJ as0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlbG1laXB2BHBvcwM4NARzZWMDYWNjb3 JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNvYmFtYXNnZXR0aW4-

comments

Getting mad never solved the problem -- Getting even never put anything right -- Punishing people simply because you can doesn't fix anything.

Asking people to help out and show up on the beaches to chip in to help contain this disaster is how you bring people together -- Not by standing back and waiting for someone else to fix the problem.

---

It is hard to feel concerned when your so detached from the common people. But it is not his job to fix this problem, he would not know how to anyway. His job is to ensure BP does their job, and to find ways to help the Gulf Coast citizens out. All this pretend acting is just getting tiresome. He maybe truly mad that this is getting in the way of his agenda though. He should just stay out of the way and let the Coast Guard Monitor BP and the situation with the leak. I have much more faith in the coast Guard anyways.

---

While the Biggest Ecological Disaster Continues to happen, Our President and his Super Rich Friends Wine & Dine at Taxpayer Expense...And goes golfing??
Whats his big plan? To send lawyers? LAWYERS???

Get the Army Corp of Engineers down there take over BP's operation and fix the (BLEEP) Problem and fine and sue BP later.

I read about someone who has a device that seperates oil from water! All our naval vessels and Oil Tankers should be deploying these to help clean up this mess before a Hurricane comes along and makes this worse.

---

When you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's going to say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions."..... I am sure that i'm not alone on this, but the exact same thing can be said about you Mr. Prez.... Now if that's not the pot calling the kettle black, then I don't know what is.

:potkettle:

[Jolie Rouge]

BP oil collection ramps up; so do claims questions
By Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer 30 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP plans to bring in an oil-burning device and a tanker from the North Sea as it tries to contain the crude spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, a disaster creating headaches for people who make their money off the sea and those processing their claims of financial loss.

The current oil containment system is catching 630,000 gallons daily, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said at a news briefing in Washington. Officials had previously cited that figure as the system's general capacity, but Allen said officials now believe it can handle 756,000 gallons daily.

Even so, there's still more oil eluding capture. BP is bringing in a second vessel that will increase capacity, as well as the North Sea shuttle tanker, which will assist in the transport of the oil, and a device that will burn off some of it. The company previously said it plans to switch out the current containment cap with a slightly larger one that will seal better and trap more oil.

The government is also keeping an eye on how BP is reimbursing people for their losses in the Gulf. Allen has written to BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding "more detail and openness" about how the company is handling mounting damage claims, reminding the beleaguered executive that his company "is accountable to the American public for the economic loss caused by the oil spill."

Allen has noted that "working claims is not something that's part of BP's organizational competence."

Among the frustrated is fishing guide Mike Helmer of Lafitte, La., who worries about paying his bills now that Barataria Bay, one of the richest fishing grounds along the Gulf, is largely shut down by oil taking the form of a widespread sheen complemented by gooey patches of crude.

Helmer said he filed a personal claim with BP several weeks ago and was told recently the company hadn't even begun on it. He filed a claim on his business just this week.

"If it's taking this long on my personal claim, who knows for my business?" Helmer said, adding that in the meantime he'll have no income — nothing.

"Who's asleep at the wheel here?" he added. "Everything's too little, too late."

Allen noted in his letter that he and other officials are meeting with BP later Wednesday to discuss problems with the handling of damage claims related to the April 20 accident.

"We need complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed," Allen wrote.

Interior Department officials expressed confidence at a Senate hearing Wednesday that more precise numbers on amount of oil leaking out will soon be available from a task force of scientists studying the matter.

"We expect to have a much better estimate very soon," Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The government has estimated that around 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons are leaking per day, but a scientist on the task force said Tuesday that his group may determine the daily rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million gallons.

That means an amount of oil equivalent to two Olympic-size swimming pools might still be escaping daily into the open sea.

The oil now being captured is being pumped to a ship on the surface where workers are burning off the natural gas attached to the crude and shipping the remaining oil to shore. In addition, the British oil giant is preparing to deploy a device called an EverGreen Burner that turns the oil-and-gas mixture into a vapor that is pushed out its 12 nozzles and burned without creating visible smoke.

The burn rig will be moved away from the main leak site so the flames and heat do not endanger other vessels, BP spokesman Max McGahan said Tuesday. He did not know when BP might start using the burner, although company officials have said they want the rig that will carry it to start processing oil by mid-June.

Depending on which model is used and its settings, it can handle 10,500 to 630,000 gallons of oil a day, according to promotional materials by Schlumberger Ltd., the company that makes the device and whose website touts it as producing "fallout-free and smokeless combustion."

Wilma Subra, a chemist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said BP should avoid burning the captured oil — which she said raises new health risks — and instead bring in more processing equipment.

"This is one of those decisions that will have negative impacts," she said. "Even though it's crude dispersed in water, the burning of crude will raise some health issues."

Officials in President Barack Obama's administration are talking with BP about a longer-term containment strategy with "built-in redundancies," Allen said. Obama is scheduled to return to the Gulf Coast on Monday and Tuesday for a two-day update on the spill.

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles insisted no massive underwater oil plumes in "large concentrations" have been detected from the spill. His comments came a day after the government said water tests confirmed underwater oil plumes in low concentrations.

"It may be down to how you define what a plume is here," Suttles told NBC's "Today" show. "Those have not been found so far by us or anyone else who's measured these."

On ABC's "Good Morning America," he said: "We haven't found any large concentrations of oil under the sea."

It's been seven weeks since the BP oil rig explosion that set off the catastrophe. The most recent government estimates put the total amount of oil lost at 23.7 million to 51.5 million gallons, making it by far the nation's largest oil spill.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print

[Jolie Rouge]

Shades of Ray Nagin's schoolbuses: miles and miles of oil booms sit unused in warehouses

Jim Hoft reports that, while an ecological disaster unfolds in the Gulf, the oil booms that could be used to help mitigate the damage are sitting... in a freaking warehouse. http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/06/breaking-miles-of-oil-containment-boom-in-warehouse-just-sitting-waiting-for-bp-or-us-to-collect-video/

And no one -- not the Department of the Interior, not DHS, not BP, not NOAA, not the EPA, not the Minerals Management Services, no one has bothered to pick them up. Or have them shipped to the Gulf.


There are miles of floating oil containment boom in warehouse right now and the manufacturer Packgen says it can make lots more on short notice. There’s just one problem... No one will come get it...

Gregory Sullivan at Pajamas Media reported, via Instapundit: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/100850/


John Lapoint of Packgen in Auburn, Maine, says he’s got plenty of floating oil containment boom and can make lots more on short notice. There’s just one problem: no one will buy it from him.

He’s already had a representative from BP visit his factory and inspect his product... Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins wrote a letter on May 21 to the secretary of the Interior, the administrator of NOAA, and the commandant of the Coast Guard to alert them to the existence of Packgen, their supply of boom, and their demonstrated capacity to make more...

...Oil collected against a boom is fairly easy to process and recycle. Sorbent booms, designed to collect oil at the water’s edge, are made from materials that absorb oil but not water — unlike hair. Oil full of hair or straw lapping against a shoreline is a HazMat nightmare...


Gee, I wonder when President Obama will start kicking, say, Janet Napolitano's ample kiester?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/S9xI57Zsv1I/AAAAAAAAc8w/mMFooamkMoU/s400/100501-gulf-white-house.jpg

Or Ken Salazar's?

Every waking moment, remember, they've been thinking about this catastrophe. In between the parties, golf trips, fundraisers, and staged propaganda events town halls.

Hoft recalls Ray Nagin's hundreds of school buses that ended up flooded when instead they could have transported New Orleans residents out of harm's way. That was another Democrat success story.

Historic, in fact.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_orkXxp0bhEA/TA7XvxiAHyI/AAAAAAAAeBY/UWn1hyCF7_s/s400/100609-buses.jpg


Shades of Katrina, indeed... while New Orleans' warehouse distric, wharfs, and houses burned the needed fire equipment was sitting in Houston unused ... because no one filed the proper requests.....

[Jolie Rouge]

AP journalist dives into Gulf, can see only oil
By Rich Matthews, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 25 mins ago

IN THE MURKY DEPTHS OF THE GULF OF MEXICO – I jump off the boat into the thickest, reddest patch of oil I've ever seen. I open my eyes and realize my mask is already smeared. I can't see anything and we're just five seconds into the dive.

Dropping beneath the surface some 40 miles out into the Gulf Of Mexico, the only thing I see is oil. To the left, right, up and down — it sits on top of the water in giant pools and hangs suspended 15 feet beneath the surface in softball-size blobs. There is nothing alive under the slick, although I see a dead jellyfish and handful of small bait fish.

I'm alone because the other divers with me wouldn't get in the water without Hazmat suits on, and with my mask oiled over and the water already dark, I don't dive deep.

It's quiet, and to be honest scary, with extremely low visibility. I spend just 10 minutes swimming around taking pictures, taking video. I want people to see the spill in a new way, a way they haven't yet.

I also want to get out of the water. Badly.

I make my way to the back of the boat unaware of just how covered I am. To be honest, I probably look a little like one of those poor pelicans we've all been seeing for days now.

The oil is thick and sticky, almost like a cake batter. It does not wipe off. You have to scrape it off, in layers, until you finally get close to the skin. Then you pour on some Dawn dishwashing soap and scrub.

I think to myself: No fish, no bird, no turtle would ever be able to clean this off itself. If any animal were to end up in this same puddle, there is almost no way it could escape.

The cleaning process goes on for half an hour before the captain will even think about letting me back in the boat. I'm clean, so I stand up.

But the bottoms of my feet still had oil, and I fall back in the water. The process starts again.

Another 30 minutes of cleaning, and finally I'm ready to step into the boat.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100609/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_on_a_dive/print;_ylt=Ak0XWnKsgjduVP0S_bjsd2up_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf residents angry about BP and claims process
Brian Skoloff And Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers – 44 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – The financial toll of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico escalated Wednesday as BP's stock plummeted to a 14-year low and fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.

The oil company captured an ever larger-share of the crude gushing from the bottom of the sea and began bringing in more heavy equipment to help in the effort, including a production ship and a tanker from the North Sea that will allow the system to process larger quantities of oil and better withstand tropical storms.

The containment efforts played out as investors deserted BP amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends, end up in bankruptcy and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Shrimpers, oystermen, seafood businesses, out-of-work drilling crews and the tourism industry all are lining up to get paid back the billions of dollars washed away by the disaster, and tempers have flared as locals direct outrage at BP over what they see as a tangle of red tape. "Every day we call the adjuster eight or 10 times. There's no answer, no answering machine," said Regina Shipp, who has filed $33,000 in claims for lost business at her restaurant in Alabama. "If BP doesn't pay us within two months, we'll be out of business. We've got two kids."

An Alabama property owner who has lost vast sums of rental income angrily confronted a BP executive at a town meeting. The owner of a Mississippi seafood restaurant said she is desperately waiting for a check to come through because fewer customers come by for shrimp po-boys and oyster sandwiches.

Some locals see dark parallels to what happened after Hurricane Katrina, when they had to wait years to get reimbursed for losses. "It really feels like we are getting a double whammy here. When does it end?" said Mark Glago, a New Orleans lawyer who is representing a fishing boat captain in a claim against BP.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed any notion that the claims process is slow or that the company is dragging its feet. Proegler said BP has cut the time to process claims and issue a check from 45 days to as little as 48 hours, provided the necessary documentation has been supplied. BP officials acknowledged that while no claims have been denied, thousands and thousands of claims had not been paid by late last week because the company required more documentation.

At the bottom of the sea, the containment cap on the ruptured well is capturing 630,000 gallons a day and pumping it to a ship at the surface, and the amount could nearly double by next week to roughly 1.17 million gallons, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government.

A second drilling vessel that will arrive within days is expected to greatly boost capacity. BP also plans to bring in the tanker from the North Sea on Monday to help transport oil and an incinerator to burn off some of the crude. The tanker is currently used to shuttle oil from North Sea rigs to the shores of Scotland, and its deployment in the Gulf has been part of the broader plan to expand the amount of crude brought to the surface once a new and improved cap-and-collection system is installed over the leaking well.

The government has estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons are leaking per day, but a scientist on a task force studying the flow said the actual rate may be between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million.

Crews working at the site toiled under oppressive conditions as the heat index soared to 110 degrees and toxic vapors emanated from the depths. Fireboats were on hand to pour water on the surface to ease the fumes.

Allen also confronted BP over the complaints about the claims process, warning the company in a letter: "We need complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed."

The admiral this week created a team including officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with the damage claims. It will send workers into Gulf communities to provide information about the process. He also planned to discuss the complaints with BP officials Wednesday.

Under federal law, BP is required to pay for a range of damage, including property losses and lost earnings. Residents and businesses can call a telephone line to report losses, file a claim online and seek help at one of 25 claims offices around the Gulf. Deckhands and other fishermen generally need to show a photo ID and documentation such as a pay stub showing how much money they typically earn.

To jump-start the process, BP was initially offering an immediate $2,500 to deckhands and $5,000 to fishing boat owners. Workers can receive additional compensation once their paperwork and larger claims are approved. BP said it has paid 18,000 claims so far and has hired 600 adjusters and operators to handle the cases.

The oil giant said it expects to spend $84 million through June alone to compensate people for lost wages and profits. That number could grow as new claims are received. When it is all over, BP could be looking at total liabilities in the billions, perhaps tens of billions, according to analysts.

BP stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent, Wednesday — easily its worst day since the April 20 rig explosion that set off the spill. In the seven weeks since then, the company has lost half its market value.

The latest slide came after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised a Senate energy panel to ask BP to compensate energy companies for losses if they have to lay off workers or suffer economically because of the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Calculating what is owed to victims of the spill has proved challenging.

David Walter owns an Alabama company that makes artificial reefs that anglers buy and drop in the Gulf to attract fish, but state regulators stopped issuing permits for the reefs on May 4 because of the oil spill — effectively killing off $350,000 in expected business.

When Walter called a claims adjuster working for BP, he was told to provide four years of invoices for May, June and July along with tax returns for those years. Walter said he sent the forms by overnight mail, but the adjuster assigned to his case changed offices and could not be found. The documents were lost.

After making more inquiries, Walter said, he was instructed to gather the same documents and this time go to a claims office. There, an adjuster told Walter he would be eligible for only a $5,000 payment since his tax returns showed a technical business loss when depreciation was factored in.

"I said that's not fair because if you say that, then I have to go out of business and I lose everything," Walter said. He is now working with an accounting firm to calculate his losses.

Not everyone had complaints about the claims process.

Bart Harrison of Clay, Ala., filed his first claim on Wednesday morning for lost rental income on his coastal property and expected to have a check for $1,010 within a few hours. The only documentation required was tax returns and rental histories for his units, which were both easy to provide. "The guy I talked to was knowledgeable and respectful. It seemed like he really wanted to write a check and please me since it was my first time in," Harrison said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill

[gmyers]

I wouldn't be surprised if this put BP out of business. Its going to take billions to clean this mess up if it can be cleaned up at all. This is a horrible tragedy for everyone.

[Jolie Rouge]

AP IMPACT ALERT: BP spill response plans severely flawed
Justin Pritchard, Tamara Lush And Holbrook Mohr, AP Writers – 1 hr 29 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Glaring errors and omissions in BP's oil spill response plans have exposed a slapdash effort to follow environmental rules, outraging Gulf Coast residents who can see on their beaches how unprepared the company was.

BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one, according to an Associated Press analysis. The lengthy plans were approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was incensed Wednesday after reading the AP story and said BP has been reactive — not proactive — all along. "Look, it's obvious to everybody in south Louisiana that they didn't have a plan, they didn't have an adequate plan to deal with this spill," Jindal said. "They didn't anticipate the BOP (blowout preventer) failure. They didn't anticipate this much oil hitting our coast. From the very first days, they kept telling us, 'Don't worry, the oil's not going to make it to your coast.'"

Among the glaring errors in the report: A professor is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.

The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as "sensitive biological resources." None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf.

Also, names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are disconnected. "The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had the full capability to deal with a major spill," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "We know that wasn't true."

Nelson said he and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have asked for a criminal investigation into some of the company's claims.

Earlier this month, the federal government announced criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Attorney General Eric Holder has not said who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

Legal experts say that to file criminal charges, the Justice Department will have to find evidence that BP or other companies involved in the deadly oil rig explosion and subsequent spill orchestrated a coverup, destroyed key documents or lied to government agents. Charges and civil penalties can be brought under a variety of environmental protection laws.

In its Deepwater Horizon plan, the British oil giant stated: "BP Exploration and Production Inc. has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan."

In the spill scenarios detailed in the documents, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, is investigating failures by the federal Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil rigs. He said Wednesday that if there had been a serious effort to reform the agency, the "mistakes" in BP's report would have been caught. "This is yet another example of MMS acting as a rubber stamp for industry, and industry settling for the lowest possible standard of safety at the expense the environment and economic vitality of the Gulf region," he said.

BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said the response plans will be reviewed "so that we can determine what worked well and what needs improvement." "Thus far we have implemented the largest spill response in history and many, many elements of it have worked well. However, we are greatly disappointed that oil has made landfall and impacted shorelines and marshes. The situation we are dealing with is clearly complex, unprecedented and will offer us much to learn from," Beaudo said.

The plans contain wildly false assumptions about oil spills. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.

The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.

The website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp. — one of two firms that BP relies on for equipment to clean a spill — links to a defunct Japanese-language page.

In early May, at least 80 Louisiana state prisoners were trained to clean birds by listening to a presentation and watching a video. It was a work force never envisioned in the plans, which contain no detailed references to how birds would be cleansed of oil.

And while BP officials and the federal government have insisted that they have attacked the problem as if it were a much larger spill, that isn't apparent from the constantly evolving nature of the response.

Asked if he was angry about the inadequate plans, Jindal said: "Absolutely. Absolutely. You can't just assume the best. Your plan can't be, well, the BOP is going to work. Your plan can't be, well, the oil is not going to travel more than 50 miles and reach our coast. Your plan can't be that if the BOP doesn't work, then the junk shot is going to work, then the mud kill shot is going to work."

This week, after BP reported the seemingly good news that a containment cap installed on the wellhead was funneling some of the gushing crude to a tanker on the surface, BP introduced a whole new set of plans mostly aimed at capturing more oil.

The latest incarnation calls for building a larger cap, using a special incinerator to burn off some of the recaptured oil and bringing in a floating platform to process the oil being sucked away from the gushing well.

In other words, the on-the-fly planning continues.

( continues )

[Jolie Rouge]

___

One of the most glaring errors in BP's plans involves Dr. Peter Lutz, a Florida professor, one of several dozen experts recommended as resources to be contacted in the event of a spill.

Lutz is listed as a go-to wildlife specialist at the University of Miami. But Lutz, an eminent sea turtle expert, left Miami almost 20 years ago to chair the marine biology department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He died four years before the plan was published.

Molly Lutcavage, a research professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who worked closely with Lutz on a groundbreaking report on the effects of oil on sea turtles, was dismayed to hear that Lutz was still listed in the response plan.

"It's horribly depressing and shocking that so little attention is paid to a bona fide contingency plan," she said. "What would Peter think? Oh, boy. I think he would think it was typical of bureaucracy."

There are other examples of how BP's plans have fallen short:

• Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore — a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.

"The vessels in question maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively," one of the documents says.

BP asserts that the combined response could skim, suck up or otherwise remove 20 million gallons of oil each day from the water. But that is about how much has leaked in the past six weeks — and the slick now covers about 3,300 square miles, according to Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's satellite sensing facility. Only a small fraction of the spill has been successfully skimmed. Plus, an undetermined portion has sunk to the bottom of the Gulf or is suspended somewhere in between.

The plan uses computer modeling to project a 21 percent chance of oil reaching the Louisiana coast within a month of a spill. In reality, an oily sheen reached the Mississippi River delta just nine days after the April 20 explosion. Heavy globs soon followed. Other locales where oil washed up within weeks of the explosion were characterized in BP's regional plan as safely out of the way of any oil danger.

• BP's site plan regarding birds, sea turtles or endangered marine mammals ("no adverse impacts") also have proved far too optimistic.

While the exact toll on the Gulf's wildlife may never be known, the effects clearly have been devastating.

More than 400 oiled birds have been treated, while dozens have been found dead and covered in crude, mainly in Louisiana but also in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. More than 200 lifeless turtles, several dolphins and countless fish also have washed ashore.

The response plans anticipate nothing on this scale. There weren't supposed to be any coastline problems because the site was far offshore.

"Due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected," the site plan says.

But that distance has failed to protect precious resources. And last week, a group of environmental research center scientists released a computer model that suggested oil could ride ocean currents around Florida and up to North Carolina by summer.

• Perhaps the starkest example of BP's planning failures: The company has insisted that the size of the leak doesn't matter because it has been reacting to a worst-case scenario all along.

Yet each step of the way, as the estimated size of the daily leak has grown from 42,000 gallons to 210,000 gallons to perhaps 1.8 million gallons, BP has been forced to scramble — to create potential solutions on the fly, to add more boats, more boom, more skimmers, more workers. And containment domes, top kills, top hats.

___

While a disaster as devastating as a major oil spill will create unforeseen problems, BP's plans do not anticipate even the most obvious issues, and use mountains of words to dismiss problems that have proven overwhelming.

In responses to lengthy lists of questions from AP, the Interior Department, which oversees the MMS, appears to concede there were problems with the two oil spill response plans.

"Many of the questions you raise are exactly those questions that will be examined and answered by the presidential commission as well as other investigations into BP's oil spill," said Kendra Barkoff, spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. She added that Salazar has undertaken reforms of MMS.

A key failure of the plan's cleanup provisions was the scarcity of boom — floating lines of plastic or absorbent material placed around sensitive areas to deflect oil.

From the start, local officials all along the Gulf Coast have complained about a lack of supplies, particularly the heavier, so-called ocean boom. But even BP says in its regional plan that boom isn't effective in seas more than three to four feet; waves in the Gulf are often bigger. And even in calmer waters, oil has swamped vital wildlife breeding grounds in places supposedly sequestered by multiple layers of boom.

The BP plans speak of thorough resources for all; there's no talk of a need to share. Still, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said his shores were left vulnerable by Coast Guard decisions to shift boom to Louisiana when the oil threatened landfall there.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, some have complained that miles of the boom now in the water were not properly anchored. AP reporters saw evidence they're right — some lines of boom were so broken up they hardly impeded the slick's push to shore.

Some out-of-state contractors misplaced boom because they didn't know local waters, yet disorganization has dogged efforts to use local boats. In Venice, La., near where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf, a large group of charter captains have been known to spend their days sitting around at the marina, earning $2,000 a day without ever attacking the oil.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_sketchy_plans;_ylt=AjIkzTEFPEPSN SvlIa2FXhGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTQzaW5oN3AzBGFzc2V0A2FwL zIwMTAwNjEwL3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX3NrZXRjaHlfcGx hbnMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM3BHBvcwM0BHB0A 2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDYXB pbXBhY3RicHNw

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama said, defending his administration's handling of the spill. "And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."


News Graphic of the Day
By Doug Powers • June 9, 2010 04:23 PM

Well, it’s not really a “news” graphic because it’s from a parody news program. Can you guess which one?

The Ed Schultz Show on MSNBC? Not this time.

No, not Chris Matthews.

Larry King? Nope.

The CBS Evening News? No, keep going…

Olbermann? Nuh-uh — I said a parody news show, not a fake news show. You get one more try…

The Daily Show? Yes!

It’s “AssQuest 2010 – The Search for Kickable Ass.”



http://michellemalkin.cachefly.net/michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/assquest.jpg


Obama’s attempt to tough-talk has turned into comedic fodder of the highest order, and worst of all, it has the word “ass” in it, which only invites any number of its natural suffixes, including “clown,” “munch,” “hole,” “face,” “hat” and “bag.” And these are supposed to be the best and the brightest?

If anybody at the White House is reading this, please tell Deputy Fife to put the bullet back in his shirt pocket before he shoots the other foot off.



Gulf Oil Spill: An Enemy With Many Asses
By Doug Powers • June 8, 2010 09:05 AM

Crisis of not knowing whose ass to kick: Day 50

A short time after telling high school grads in Kalamazoo, Michigan “don’t make excuses,” President Obama told Matt Lauer: “I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

Sigh. You ask for John Wayne and you get the Apple Dumpling Gang.

One would hope Obama would be consulting experts so daddy can plug the hole, but if he’d rather utilize the education and time of engineers and oceanographers to figure out whose ass to kick, hey, he’s the president.

All Obama has to do is look around his administration and maybe even in a mirror — if he can’t find multiple asses to kick there, he’s just not the attentive, observant and thoughtful genius that the media advertised all through 2008 ...

[Jolie Rouge]

Why Won’t Obama Meet With the CEO of BP?
By Doug Powers • June 9, 2010 09:43 AM

Presidential candidate Obama, would you be willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and and Kim Jong Il?



“I would.”

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/06/figures-obama-will-hold-talks-with-ahmadinejad-but-not-with-bp/

----

President Obama, have you spoken with the CEO of BP to discuss the oil spill in the Gulf?


“No… when you talk to a guy like the BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/37568416#37568416


That sounds more like a reason to avoid talking to a politician, but not an oil exec. Given the fact that Talker, Chicago Ranger recently expressed an interest in figuring out whose ass to kick over this oil mess, isn’t it a little strange that he’s passing up on the opportunity to take a very public in-person bootswipe at head of the company whose tragic accident further exposed the president as an aloof golf-o-crat who is incapable of grasping a problem that can’t be solved by intimidation, smear campaigns, boycotts, racially-charged accusations and wealth transfer?

My own theory as to why the president won’t meet with BP’s CEO is simple: Obama’s afraid that his opportunity for a public ass-kicking would also give BP a chance to very publicly ask for their money back.

In the meantime, if President Obama wants to know to kick ass, he should take some lessons, not to mention advice, from Sarah Palin.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

[Jolie Rouge]

CNN Blames White People For Obama's Slow Action On Oil Spill

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/06/09/cnn-blames-white-people-obamas-slow-action-oil-spill

[Jolie Rouge]

June 10, 2010
Dispersant Disaster: A Closer Look at BP's Toxic Solution
by: Mike Ludwig truthout|Report

Kristian Gustavson found "all sorts" of dead dolphins and sea turtles on Ship Island in past weeks. Dead marine life is a common sight in the Gulf of Mexico these days, but Gustavson said the water was clear. The beaches on the Mississippi barrier island were white and clean. Oil from the British Petroleum's underwater catastrophe had not reached the sprawling marine graveyard.

Gustavson, co-founder of conservation group Below the Surface, believes these animals may not have simply fallen victim to the oil that has been gushing from BP's deepwater well since the April 20 Deepwater Horizon disaster. He said the controversial oil dispersant BP is spraying across the slick could be the culprit.

Dispersants break up the oil slick into smaller, more bio-degradable droplets. Gustavson said the process is good for aesthetics, but huge plumes of dispersed oil are now clouding the deep sea with toxins and moving inland. Corexit, the main line of dispersants used by BP, came under public scrutiny last week after a Congressman informed The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that it is all but banned in the United Kingdom. The EPA told BP to use less Corexit and invest in chemicals proven to be less toxic and more effective. BP issued a response defending their decision to use Corexit, and soon the amount of dispersants dumped in the Gulf neared an unprecedented one million gallons.

Dozens of residents along the Gulf Coast have reported headaches, nausea and trouble breathing after coming in contact with oil and dispersant fumes, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. But Corexit producer Nalco claims the newest version, Corexit 9500, is "more than 27 times safer than dish soap," according to a web release.

Nalco is an international chemical company directed by board members who cut their petrochemical teeth with companies like Monsanto, DuPont, Exxon and - you guessed it - BP. When the media discovered the EPA had rated 12 dispersants as more effective than Corexit, all eyes turned to Nalco board member Rodney Chase, who spent 38 years with BP and left as an executive.

A million gallons of any chemical, including dish soap, could certainly harm people and wildlife, and Corexit is no exception. Nalco's own safety data sheet identifies three hazardous chemicals in Corexit 9500, and lists symptoms of exposure as "acute" and consistent with reports from the poison control centers. Corexit 9500 predecessor Corexit 9527 contained the notorious chemical 2-butoxyethanol that allegedly poisoned cleanup workers during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster. The Corexit 9500 data sheet does not include the chemical in its list of hazards, but a 1996 University of California study on invertebrates concluded that there was no "significant difference" in toxicity between Corexit 9500 and the older formula.

In 2005, researchers at the University of Plymouth in the UK reported that Corexit's ability to kill invertebrates constituting the base of the underwater food chain increases substantially at a certain concentration level. The report concluded that Corexit poses a threat to shallow water ecosystems like wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs.

This threat is a reality for conservationist Casi Callaway, director of the Mobile Baykeeper group. Oil had yet to officially reach Alabama's Mobile Bay when Callaway spoke with Truthout on last Thursday, but she said the devastation had already begun. "We've had massive fish kills," said Callaway. "The first fish kill we had was two weeks ago... it was everything, thousands of dead fish."

Callaway said locals have observed BP contract workers filling trash bags with "brown goop" and requesting observers stop taking pictures. She believes the microbes and invertebrates consuming the vast underwater plumes of dispersed oil are depleting the oxygen in the Gulf and choking out other species. She also said it is a "very strong possibility" that dispersants are moving into Mobile Bay ahead of the oil.

Like many researchers and conservationists, Callaway knows that some ecological sacrifices must be made to save the Gulf from destruction. But both Callaway and Gustavson say the dispersants are just a dirty way for the giant corporation to save face. "The chemical dispersant to us is a PR mechanism," Callaway said. "Get it out of sight, get it out of mind. What we don't know about the chemical dispersant is every reason not to use it."

She insists options like siphoning and burning the oil are not perfect, but they are safer than filling the water with chemicals and expanding clouds of sinking oil droplets. Gustavson, who insists that "fighting pollution with pollution" can never work, said he is researching ways to use the Mississippi River and the natural filtration power of the wetlands to address the disaster.

For conservationists like Callaway and Gustavson, the fight to restore the Gulf Coast will continue for years. They don't have billions of dollars to throw around like BP and corporate disaster profiteers, but they know environmental stewardship does more than scratch the surface. It goes much deeper than that.

[Jolie Rouge]

Louisiana leaders want Gulf drilling to resume
Alan Sayre And Chris Kahn, Associated Press Writers – 30 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – At the same time they are venting their fury on BP over the Gulf of Mexico spill and its calamitous environmental effects, Louisiana politicians are rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and pleading with Washington to bring back offshore drilling — now.

As angry as they are over the disaster, state officials warn that the Obama administration's temporary ban on drilling in the Gulf has sent Louisiana's most lucrative industry into a death spiral.

They contend that drilling is safe overall and that the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction, akin to grounding every airplane in America because of a single crash. They worry, too, that the moratorium comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry — fishing — has been brought to a standstill by the mess in the Gulf.

"For God's sake, don't finish us off with a moratorium," Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said this week.

Meanwhile, a government task force of scientists said that before BP cut and capped the blown-out well at the bottom of the sea a week ago, it was spewing 2.1 million gallons of oil per day — or twice as much as the government's previous worst-case estimate.

The oil-and-gas industry is the backbone of the Louisiana economy, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue for the government and accounting for nearly one-third of the nation's domestic crude production.

It took a heavy blow when the government imposed a six-month offshore drilling moratorium in the wake of the spill that has sent upwards of 50 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The government imposed the ban while it reviews the safety of deepwater drilling in light of the BP disaster.

Louisiana lawmakers have railed against the moratorium, saying it could put more than 100,000 people out of work, shutter businesses and destroy livelihoods. A bill asking the administration to shorten the moratorium passed the Legislature unanimously.

But persuading the administration to take such action could prove to be extraordinarily difficult at a time when globs of oil are fouling marshes and beaches, images of oil-soaked birds are a fixture in the news and no apparent end to the spill is in sight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has acknowledged the potential damage to energy companies and their employees and promised a Louisiana senator the administration would demand that BP compensate businesses for their losses.

The moratorium put a halt to the 33 deepwater exploratory rigs in operation in the Gulf in addition to all new deep-sea drilling permits. Platforms that are already producing oil along with rigs in shallow waters are allowed to remain in operation.

"Every one of these deepwater wells employs directly hundreds of people and indirectly thousands," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. "This is one company. This is one well. It's a terrible situation and no one is making light of it, but what I'm saying, as strongly as I can, to this president is the economic analysis is devastating to many companies, thousands of companies.

BP hopes that it can stem the flow of oil soon and remove some of the heat that has been put on the company and energy industry by politicians, the American public and investors, who have dumped BP stock and driven its price down to the lowest level in 14 years out of fear that the spill could spell the company's ruin.

BP is capturing more oil from the bottom of the sea each day, and expects to siphon even larger quantities by early next week once more heavy equipment arrives. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government, said BP could be taking in 1.17 million gallons a day by next week, up from the current daily rate of 630,000. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama on Thursday met with the families of the 11 rig workers who were killed in the April 20 explosion.

Trade groups estimate that the 33 deepwater rigs idled the moratorium employed 5,900 to 9,200 people. Rig workers earn up to $1,800 per week, so that amounts to a loss of tens of millions dollars in salaries. In addition, those jobs support an additional 26,000 to 46,000 industry workers.

"It's going to put us out of business," said Glenn LeCompte, owner of a Louisiana catering company that provides food to offshore rigs. "My payroll probably runs about $150,000 a week. That payroll is going to disappear."

Gulf communities already are seeing the livelihoods of thousands of fisherman, property owners and tourism workers jeopardized by the spill. Fishing and tourism contribute $10 billion to Louisiana's $210 billion economy, while energy contributes $65 billion.

"Those two things, fishing and oil, coexist together and form a way of life down here," said Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young.

The Energy Department estimates that 25 million barrels of oil production will be lost in 2011 because of the six-month moratorium. That's less than what the country burns in two days, but production will drop even more if the ban is extended to a year or more, as a number of analysts expect.

Many of the drilling jobs could end up going to Brazil, which recently discovered numerous oil fields off its coast. Brazilian oil company Petrobras wants to tap those fields but lacks the rigs.

"They're licking their chops saying, 'We'll take them'" from the U.S., said industry analyst Collin Gerry.

Barry Graham, general manager of Barry Graham Oil Service LCC, which operates 21 petroleum support vessels from Alabama and Louisiana, said he is hoping to avoid layoffs among his 150 employees.

"It's like sitting here waiting for the storm to approach," he said. "You sit and wait for a hurricane when you get the news it's coming. That's what this feels like — just waiting to get hit."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AlGGyEk.vfbkBLPtXX30CNEEq59 4;_ylu=X3oDMTM2dWFhdmw1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNjEwL3V zX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb 3MDMQRwb3MDMQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA2xvdWl zaWFuYWxlYQ--

[Jolie Rouge]

La. oyster shuckers fear for livelihood
Kevin Mcgill, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 10, 2:44 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – An early morning workday ritual — the shucking of small mountains of oysters for New Orleans restaurants — fell victim to the BP offshore oil spill Thursday at a 134-year-old French Quarter oyster house where neighbors treated the news like a death in the family.

Amid the din of nearly a dozen men and women hammering and prying at the last piles bags of craggy oyster shells at P&J Oyster Co., Jerry Amato wandered in bearing comfort food: aluminum trays full of scrambled eggs, fried ham, grits and biscuits.

"That's what we do in New Orleans. After the funeral, we bring food," said Amato, proprietor of Mother's Restaurant.

P&J isn't quite dead yet but, barring an unforeseen reopening of the oyster beds that supply the business, Thursday was to be the final day of shucking at the family owned business.

"I'm going to try and buy a few shucked oysters from some people in Alabama that are still processing oysters and once they stop, I'm done," said Al Sunseri, who, along with his brother Sal, runs the business that opened in 1876.

Sunseri isn't sure what will happen to P&J and its employees in the long haul. On Thursday morning he walked through the cavernous shucking area and loading dock on Toulouse Street and nodded toward the shuckers still working with industrial fervor.

"These ladies here, those guys — I grew up with them. We were in our 20s when we started," said Sunseri, 52.

Curiosity seekers included Jim Cottrell, executive with a nearby antiques store, who said he'd always meant to drop by because, "I wanted to see exactly how they do this."

Other Louisiana oyster companies say their oyster supplies are also dwindling, prices are rising and the future of their business remains stark and uncertain.

"The same thing happening over at P&J is happening over here also," said John Tesvich, owner of Ameripure Oyster Co. in Franklin, La. His company sells pasteurized oysters to restaurants around the country.

Tesvich said Ameripure may be able to hold on a little longer because it cultivates and harvests its own oysters, supplemented by suppliers. "But they're on the point of depletion now," said Tesvich, adding he's hoping for "a few more good weeks."

Oyster growers and harvesters are facing a double threat.

On the one hand, oil gushing from the blown-out well off Louisiana could contaminate the beds, killing the oysters or rendering them unsafe to eat. On the other hand, a method of fighting the encroaching oil by opening inland water diversion gates in hopes of pushing the oil back also could kill oysters. The fresh inland water dilutes saltier waters oysters need to thrive.

Complicating the problem: It's spawning season for young oysters that usually take 18 to 24 months to grow to market size.

Third-generation oyster farmer Wilbert Collins, 73, said it could take three years to replenish the stock on some of his leases where fresh water is encroaching.

Collins said he owns three boats. Two are idle and one is doing oil cleanup work. He's not sure what the future holds for his business — or for his sons and grandson who work with him.

John Rotonti, owner of Felix's Oyster Bar and Restaurant, said he has yet to run out of oysters for the raw bar at his eatery just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter tourist district. Still, he's having to absorb price hikes and uncertain supplies.

At some point, he said, he'll have to close the raw bar that is the trademark of his business and probably lay off a half-dozen shuckers.

Tesvich, Sunseri and Kevin Voisin — an executive with family owned Houma oyster processor Motivatit Seafood — all say they worry not just for themselves but for their workers. Some of their employees have been with the companies for years.

"There's 200 families that eat because Motivatit Seafood exists," Voisin said.

The owners of the companies said they are now at varying stages of filing claims for aid from the oil giant BP, which has spent weeks trying to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf.

At P&J, longtime employee Wayne Gordon, 42, said his emotions ran the gamut from pain at the prospect of losing a job he's held since he was 18 and anger at what he sees as the incompetence that caused the unending underwater gusher.

"Twenty-four years," Gordon said as he took a break in the room where freshly shucked oysters were being packed into plastic cartons. "I cannot imagine not being here."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100610/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_oysters;_ylt=AhEqOHXO11las.ex9lg u0Eqs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlaDR0OHVqBHBvcwM2OARzZWMDYWN jb3JkaW9uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNvaWxzcGlsbGxhb3k-

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama says he won't forget Gulf oil spill families
Darlene Superville, Associated Press Writer – 37 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Thursday consoled relatives of the 11 workers killed in the Gulf oil spill disaster, acknowledging their "unimaginable grief" and personally assuring the families that he will stand with them.

One man who lost a son asked Obama to support efforts to update federal law limiting the amount of money the families can collect.

"He told us we weren't going to be forgotten," said Keith Jones, of Baton Rouge, La. "He just wanted us to know this wasn't going to leave his mind and his heart."

Jones' 28-year-old son, Gordon, was working on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP PLC when it exploded April 20 and then sank in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and creating one of Obama's biggest challenges as president.

The younger Jones, who inspected mud that was pumped up from the deep-sea well, left behind a wife, Michelle, and sons, a 2-year-old and a month-old baby. Obama held the baby, Maxwell Gordon, who will never know his father.

"He said he hadn't done that in nine years, held a baby that size," Keith Jones told reporters on the White House driveway afterward.

Amid the grandeur of the Red Room and the adjacent State Dining Room, Obama addressed the grieving families as a group before he worked his way around the rooms, taking as much time as needed to console each family, Keith Jones said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs released a brief statement afterward that said Obama expressed his condolences and told the families that he, first lady Michelle Obama and the entire administration are "behind them and will be there long after the cameras are gone as they go through their unimaginable grief." Obama was joined by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, White House energy adviser Carol Browner, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government.

Keith Jones said he and another son, Chris, asked Obama to support changing the Death on the High Seas Act, a 90-year-old law that limits liability for wrongful deaths more than three miles offshore. He said the law is unfair and "not in keeping with the way we do things now."

Obama promised to look into the matter, Keith Jones said.

Gibbs had told reporters earlier Thursday that Obama would tell the families that he'll work with Congress to address disparities in the law and to make sure that the families receive due compensation.

Jones is among four families that have sued Transocean Ltd., the rig's owner, as well as BP and other companies involved in its operation. The cases seek unspecified damages and are pending in federal courts in Houston and New Orleans. They could be consolidated with more than 150 other lawsuits filed by fishermen, businesses and property owners claiming economic losses because of the spill.

Obama put a temporary halt to such deep-sea oil drilling after the accident, but some lawmakers and others want him to lift it, arguing that the freeze could idle tens of thousands of oil industry workers.

In his conversations with the families, Obama defended his decision to halt drilling, saying he wanted time to put additional safety measures in place to make sure something like the Deepwater Horizon explosion doesn't happen again.

Congressional leaders, meanwhile, stepped up the pressure on BP to fully compensate economic victims of the spill.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said "every taxpayer in America must know that BP will be held accountable for what is owed." Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell agreed that BP must "clean up the spill," but he also said Democrats shouldn't use the tragedy to campaign for energy legislation he contended would amount to a "national energy tax."

Asked whether BP should cut its dividends to shareholders, Pelosi said BP made $17 billion last year and that the company has "a responsibility to pay these damages" to businesses in the Gulf.

"Maybe people who receive dividends have deeper pockets," she said.

Gibbs declined to comment on BP's legal obligations to its shareholders.

He did not, however, rule out the possibility of a meeting next week between Obama and BP chief executive Tony Hayward, who is scheduled to testify June 17 at a House Energy subcommittee hearing into the spill. Obama has yet to personally speak with Hayward since the explosion seven weeks ago, which Gibbs repeatedly has been questioned about in recent days.

Keith Jones described the mood during the meeting with Obama as sedate and respectful, not solemn or morose. He said he was glad Obama hadn't invited the families to the White House sooner because "it would have been far too early for me."

Keith Jones wore a blue ribbon pinned to his lapel with "Deepwater Horizon" written in yellow and 11 yellow stars — one for each victim.

Asked about criticism that Obama was too hands-off in the weeks immediately after the disaster, Keith Jones sounded supportive of the president.

"I don't know what people expected the president to do exactly, if they want him to go out there and wash pelicans," Keith Jones said. "He's the president. He's not someone who cleans beaches. It's important for us Louisianans to know that we have his support and I think he's communicated that."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AuYxkLi5BgUJGjjkF4Iqf Fip_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTE2MWZlcWNnBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bi1yL WItbGVmdARzbGsDLW9iYW1hc2F5c2hl

[Jolie Rouge]

How to help wildlife threatened by the oil spill
By Erin Carlson
Posted Fri Apr 30, 2010 2:42pm PDT

A massive oil slick caused by the BP oil drilling platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the U.S. Gulf Coast. Efforts are already underway to protect sensitive ecological areas.

Many organizations are preparing to mobilize along the coast from Louisiana to Florida to help rescue animals and wildlife. The oil poses a serious threat to fishermen's livelihoods, marine habitats, beaches, wildlife, and human health.

Although BP has publicly stated the company will pay for all damages from the oil spill, many organizations still rely on donations to protect wildlife from this type of impact. For example, Greenpeace stated that it has opened support lines to report oiled wildlife, discuss oil-related damage, and for volunteer recruitment, and the group relies on donations from individuals for this type of work.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/279/how-to-help-wildlife-threatened-by-the-oil-spill.html;_ylt=ArD5ylsx6Vr_SJ4LM.TUmP.p_aF4;_ylu= X3oDMTE2OXU2MzdmBHBvcwM0BHNlYwN5bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbG sDLWhvd3RvaGVscHdp



Rescuing oiled birds: Poignant, but is it futile?
John Flesher And Noaki Schwartz, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 32 mins ago\

FORT JACKSON, La. – Rescuers gently washing the goo from pelicans make for some of the few hopeful images from the disaster on the Gulf of Mexico, yet some scientists contend those efforts are good for little more than warming hearts.

Critics call bird-washing a wasteful exercise in feel-good futility that simply buys doomed creatures a bit more time. They say the money and man-hours would be better spent restoring wildlife habitat or saving endangered species.

In the seven weeks since oil began erupting from a mile-deep well after a drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 150 pelicans, gulls, sandwich terns and other birds have been treated at a warehouse-turned-refugee encampment 70 miles south of New Orleans.

A total of 473 birds in the Gulf region have been collected alive with visible oil; 117 oiled birds have been found dead. More are on the way, as oil slicks assault beaches and marshes that serve as breeding areas for many species.

The victims are scrubbed clean and held a week or more to recover. Then a Coast Guard plane flies them to Tampa Bay in Florida for release — far enough away, workers hope, that the birds won't return to oiled waters and get soaked again. Birds treated from this disaster have been tagged, and none has been spotted in oil again.

It's all part of a broader animal care initiative overseen by federal agencies and operated largely by nonprofit groups, with funding from BP PLC. Other centers focus on turtles and marine mammals.

"All of us here taking care of the wildlife feel it's important," said Rhonda Murgatroyd of Wildlife Response Services in Houma, La. "We can't just leave them there — somebody has to take care of them."

A noble sentiment, said Ron Kendall, director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University. But the hard reality is that many, if not most, oiled creatures probably won't live long after being cleansed and freed, he said.

"Once they've gone through that much stress, particularly with all the human handling and confinement, it's very difficult," Kendall said. "Some species might tolerate it better than others, but when you compare the benefits to the costs ... I am skeptical."

The arm of the federal government that nominally oversees offshore rigs agrees with Kendall, and has for some time.

"Studies are indicating that rescue and cleaning of oiled birds makes no effective contribution to conservation, except conceivably for species with a small world population," the U.S. Minerals Management Service said in a 2002 environmental analysis of proposed Gulf oil drilling projects. "A growing number of studies indicate that current rehabilitation techniques are not effective in returning healthy birds to the wild."

Fewer than 10 percent of brown pelicans that were cleaned and marked for tracing after a 1990 spill in Southern California were accounted for two years later, while more than half the pelicans in a control group could be found, three scientists with the University of California, Davis, reported in a paper published in 1996. The formerly oiled birds also showed no signs of breeding.

Dan Anderson, a professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of California at Davis who led the study, said last week he still questions how well the rescue missions succeed but doesn't oppose them.

"If nothing else, we're morally obligated to save birds that seem to be savable," Anderson said.

Besides, bird rehabilitation groups have improved their methods the past couple of decades, he said.

A 2002 study by Humboldt State University scientists found that gulls treated after a California spill survived just as well as gulls that were not oiled. Rescue supporters also point to data showing high survival rates for penguins receiving care from a South African foundation that has handled more than 50,000 oiled seabirds since 1968.

Determining the success rate of cleaning and releasing other animals such as turtles and dolphins can be even harder than it is with birds, said Robert MacLean, a veterinarian with the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans. He and other wildlife experts spent part of Thursday showing off three Kemp's ridley turtles that had been found in the oil off Louisiana.

"They seem to be doing well. They have started eating on their own," MacLean said, before cautioning: "We don't know what the long-term effects are going to be from the oil."

Rescue missions can convey a false impression that damage from oil spills can be fixed, said Jim Estes, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked on the federal effort to save animals after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

"Oil may be doing a species considerable harm, but rehabilitation won't change that," Estes said. "It will just help a relatively small number of individuals from suffering and dying."

At the Fort Jackson warehouse, where shivering pelicans huddled inside pens awaiting their turn to be cleansed, such criticisms are shrugged off.

"What do you want us to do? Let them die?" said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, who has aided oiled animals for 40 years.

Most birds arrive at rescue centers hungry, dehydrated and exhausted, having neglected eating in the frantic struggle to clean themselves. Once a bird is strong enough, two workers cover it in warm vegetable oil to remove the sticky oil, then apply dish soap and scrub parts of its head with a toothbrush.

It's time-consuming and expensive. Cleaning a single pelican can require 300 gallons of water. After the Exxon Valdez, some studies estimated that $15,000 had been spent for each marine bird treated, a figure others said was exaggerated. Scientists with the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in California said it costs them $600 to $750 to clean a bird.

James Harris, a senior wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helping care for birds sullied by the current spill, said critics also forget that many rescued animals will produce offspring — especially brown pelicans, which were taken off the federal endangered list only last year.

"It may be one pelican to me," he said, "but it could represent a couple dozen pelicans to my children and could be in the tens of hundreds for my grandchildren."

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[Jolie Rouge]

New oil spill total is bad news for BP, wildlife
By Brian Skoloff And Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writers 30 mins ago

GRAND ISLE, La. – The astonishing news that the oil leak at the bottom of the sea may be twice as big as previously thought could have major repercussions for both the environment and BP's financial health, killing more marine life and dramatically increasing the amount the company must pay in fines and damages.

Scientists now say the blown-out well could have been spewing as much as 2 million gallons of crude a day before a cut-and-cap maneuver started capturing some of the flow, meaning more than 100 million gallons may have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the start of the disaster in April. That is more than nine times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, previously the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The larger estimates, while still preliminary and considered a worst-case scenario, could contribute to breathtaking liabilities against BP. Penalties can be levied against the company under a variety of environmental protection laws, including fines of up to $1,100 under the Clean Water Act for each barrel of oil spilled.

Based on the maximum amount of oil possibly spilled to date, that would translate to a potential civil fine for simple discharge alone of $2.8 billion. If BP were found to have committed gross negligence or willful misconduct, the civil fine could be up to $4,300 per barrel, or up to $11.1 billion.

"It's going to blow the record books up," said Eric Schaeffer, who led the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement office from 1997 to 2002.

A larger spill also could lead to increased environmental hazards, with shrimp, crabs and fish such as marlin and swordfish especially hard hit.

"Certainly if there are greater volumes of oil than were originally estimated, that doesn't bode well," said Jim Franks, a fisheries biologist at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. "Do we expect twice the impact? I don't know how to judge that, but that much more oil could not be good at all for fish and wildlife resources. I would anticipate far-reaching impacts."

Days after the spill began, government officials told the public that the ruptured well a mile below the Gulf was leaking 42,000 gallons a day. Then, officials said it was actually five times bigger. That estimate didn't last long either. The new estimates are based on spillcam video as well as such things as satellite, sonar and pressure readings.

The lead scientist in the effort said the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons and 1.68 million gallons a day.

Another part of the equation is how much more oil started to leak last week after the riser pipe was cut, a step that BP and government officials said could increase the flow by 20 percent. The pipe cut was necessary to install a cap over the well; the cap has captured an estimated 4 million gallons so far.

If the higher-end estimates prove accurate, the leak amounts to an Exxon Valdez every five days or so. At that rate, in just over three weeks from now it will eclipse the worst oil spill in peacetime history, the 1979 Ixtoc disaster in Mexico, which took 10 months to belch out 140 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

And there's more bad news. The oil gushing from the Gulf contains large amounts of natural gas. Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, said that can contribute significantly to oxygen levels plummeting in the water as microbes eat the methane clouds.

In addition to the potential for billions in fines, BP is responsible for paying all cleanup costs and up to $75 million for economic damages. But it could face far heavier expenses if gross negligence is found or if it is determined that there was a violation of a federal safety, construction or operating regulation, Schaeffer said.

"You bet the trial lawyers are sharpening their swords around that language," he said.

And that's not including the tens of billions of dollars in shareholder wealth that has already evaporated with the plunge of BP's stock since the disaster.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg became a lonely defender of BP, declaring the world should not rush to point fingers at the British oil giant. The billionaire tycoon often sides with CEOs and businesses entangled in public relations disasters.

"The guy that runs BP didn't exactly go down there and blow up the well," Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. "And what's more, if we want them to fix it and they're the only ones with the expertise, I think I might wait to assign blame."

That the BP oil spill may be twice as bad as earlier estimates was hard news to hear but no surprise to Christian Delos Reyes, a 39-year-old oyster dredger.

"Crabs start real small. You know they're all going to die. It'll kill all the oysters. In my opinion, I don't think it'll ever be all right," Reyes said. "I think it's destroyed."

Wanda Kirby, 65, owns the Sandpiper Shores Motel in Grand Isle, La., a couple of hundred feet from where a long strand of bright orange boom slices across the beach to block the oil.

"Whether it's five gallons or five million, I don't care. We don't really need to be wasting time measuring it," she said. "We just need to stop it."

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[Jolie Rouge]

BP's failures on the Gulf made worse by PR woes :slap:
By Harry R. Weber And Erin Mcclam, Associated Press Writers Fri Jun 11, 8:30 pm ET

HOUSTON – BP is already fighting an oil gusher it can't contain and watching its mighty market value wither away. Its own bumbling public-relations efforts are making a big mess worse.

Not only has it made a series of gaffes — none greater than the CEO's complaint that "I'd like my life back" — the company hasn't even followed its own internal guidelines for damage control after a spill.

Executives have quibbled about the existence of undersea plumes of oil, downplayed the potential damage early in the crisis and made far-too-optimistic predictions for when the spill could be stopped. BP's steadiest public presence has been the ever-present live TV shot of the untamed gusher.

What BP has lacked, crisis management experts say, has been much of a show of human compassion.

"All crises are personal," said Richard Levick, who runs a public relations firm, Levick Strategic Communications, that advises companies. "Action and sacrifice is absolutely critical."

The best move for BP's image, of course, would be to stop the leak. That has proved difficult enough, with one fix after another failing and estimates of the severity of the spill growing by the week.

Failing a solution, Daniel Keeney, president of a Dallas-based PR firm, suggested putting CEO Tony Hayward in a hard hat and life vest, helping crews contain and clean up the spill.

"You want to get him right in the thick of things, even if he looks somewhat uncomfortable doing it," Keeney said.

Levick suggested BP could have cut gas prices at its stations along the Gulf Coast — a show of financial solidarity.

BP has taken a stab at soothing angry Americans, airing a slick, multimillion-dollar national TV spot this week in which Hayward pledges: "We will make this right." Hayward also promised BP would clean up every drop of oil and "restore the shoreline to its original state." President Barack Obama said the money spent on the ads should have gone to cleanup and compensating devastated fisherman and small business owners.

And even those efforts violate the company's own prescription for damage control. Its own spill plan, filed last year with the federal government, says of public relations: "No statement shall be made containing any of the following: promises that property, ecology or anything else will be restored to normal."

On top of everything else, BP can't figure out what to say about its dividend. Lawmakers in the U.S. insist the company must look after the devastated people of the Gulf before paying its shareholders. But in Britain, legions of retirees count on the steady payouts.

And earlier this week when Wall Street freaked out over the prospect of billions of dollars in BP liabilities and sent its stock to its lowest point since the mid-1990s, the company response was positively tone-deaf.

"The company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement," the company said early Thursday, after its stock was hammered on New York and European exchanges.

Almost from the beginning, BP has been as unable to control its public message as it has the spill itself.

Hayward was ridiculed for telling reporters "I'd like my life back" earlier in the crisis, remarks the families of some of the 11 men killed in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig felt were insensitive. He also suggested that the environmental impact of the spill would be "very, very modest."

Former Shell chairman John Hofmeister said it might have been more appropriate for senior U.S. executives of the company to take the heat. Hayward is an Englishman, and BP is based in Britain.

"I think it was a mistake for Tony Hayward to come and put his physical presence in the U.S.," Hofmeister said. "The U.S. has its own culture and traditions. Foreign companies can come and do business there, but they are not necessarily welcomed."

BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, an American, was rolled out for interviews, but his aides grumbled Hayward was stealing the spotlight. Hayward's decision to present a video explaining BP's "top kill" attempt took the company's Louisiana command by surprise.

As for Suttles himself, he insisted this week that there were no massive underwater oil plumes in "large concentrations" from the spill. To NBC, he offered that it "may be down to how you define what a plume is here."

The government had said three tests confirmed oil as far as three-fifths of a mile below the surface of the Gulf, at least 40 miles away from the site of the gushing well.

Suttles also predicted the spill would be reduced to a "relative trickle" by early next week. BP later sought to walk the comments back, saying the company was optimistic but that getting the spill to a trickle would take more time.

By late this week, the government had reported that the spill was spewing the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez disaster into the Gulf every two weeks or less, with the catastrophe nearing the end of its second month.

Since the April 20 explosion, BP has parachuted its own staff, plus staff from at least two independent public-relations firms, to deal with the deluge of round-the-clock media inquiries.

Early on in the crisis, BP and government officials held daily in-person briefings with media, allowing questions. In recent days and weeks, officials have increasingly resorted to teleconferences with reporters and have limited the ability to ask questions and the number of questions that could be asked.

In Houston, where BP has set up a U.S. command center, company PR officials have grown weary of reporters going directly to engineers and other higher-ups for information, at times trying to insist media go through them first.

Spokesman Robert Wine said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that media visits to the Houston center are "very carefully controlled and sparingly arranged" by design.

"The rooms that are shown are full of the teams who WILL make a difference on the result of this crisis," Wine wrote. "Every second they are not helping with media visits is time they are not doing the `day job.'"

In the meantime, BP has been buying up spill-related search terms on Google and Yahoo, so that links to its own oil-response sites pop up first. BP says the idea is to help people on the Gulf find the right forms and people quickly and effectively.

Others suggest it's a move to steer searchers away from bad press for BP.

"It is clearly trying to protect its brand image," said Matthew Whiteway, director of campaign management at London consulting firm Greenlight, which says 95 percent of BP's search listings are rated very negative.

Crisis management experts say the only reliable way to repair BP's badly tarnished image is the obvious one — to plug the hole.

"Crisis management is about fixing the problem. It's not about looking good," said Tony Jaques, a crisis management consultant in Melbourne, Australia. "BP has done some things that have not been smart, but really, what would they have done to look good in this kind of situation anyway?"

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[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill and the political spillover in the Senate energy debate
By The Monitor's Editorial Board Fri Jun 11, 1:24 pm ET

At first, the Gulf oil spill was seen as a wake-up call for the United States to finally pass a climate-change law. The images of black goo washing up on beaches would be enough to persuade Americans to kick their fossil-fuel habit.

Bu nearly two months after the BP spill began spewing petroleum, it hasn’t turned out that way.

Key senators from states that rely heavily on jobs related to both offshore oil and coal continue to block bills that would push the US – the largest source of greenhouse gases per capita – toward doing its part to reverse global warming.

Their election-year desire to maintain high-carbon industries during a period of high unemployment is trumping a longer-term need to create a low-carbon economy.

This political shortsightedness by a few regions of the United States transcends the usual partisan politics of Washington. In fact, President Obama is now trying to find a compromise with a dozen or so Democratic senators from coal and oil states that could result in passage of almost any energy bill this summer.

Such a measure would add to Mr. Obama’s health-care law and the likely passage of financial reform. It would also give him a victory after criticism of his handling of the Gulf oil spill. Most of all, the White House wants some sort of reform in US energy before a possible conservative swing in Congress after this fall’s elections.

What sort of compromises should Obama accept in an energy bill? His choices have only gotten worse.

The House passed a climate-change measure last year that set high targets for carbon reduction. But then recently in the Senate, a weaker measure was introduced by John Kerry (D) and Joe Lieberman (I). After that, GOP Sen. Richard Lugar proposed a bill with no carbon targets but only incentives for energy conservation and for coal plants to close by 2018.

The White House and Senate majority leader Harry Reid are now trying to pick parts of each measure for a smorgasbord bill that could win the necessary 60 votes for passage.

This half-a-loaf political approach may possibly create momentum for stronger action in the future. But it hardly comes close to the huge task of drastic reductions in carbon emissions. It also doesn’t set much of an example for other big polluting nations such as China and India to do their part.

A broad consensus already exists on many steps toward better energy use, such as expanding the use of electric cars and investments in renewable energy technologies. But at the least, Obama should insist that the use of oil and coal becomes more expensive in coming years. That could be done through a tax, a cap on polluting industries, or by an assortment of federal incentives.

Businesses, as well as most Americans, are uncertain about the country’s energy future. If anything, the Gulf oil spill – an unexpected and tragic event – only reinforces a fear of this uncertainty.

It is up to Obama to restore some certainty and help reduce those public fears. He can show better leadership by seeking the strongest energy bill possible.

His attempt to display more control over the oil spill should go hand in hand with more political arm-twisting in the Senate.

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[Jolie Rouge]

How oil spills like BP's can reshape politics, from the Amazon to America
By Sandy Tolan Fri Jun 11, 11:19 am ET

Los Angeles – As the plumes of sickly fluorescent oil begin to wash up on Gulf shores, the immediate focus is on how – and whether – officials can mitigate the destruction of wetlands, fisheries, and the lifeways of coastal towns.

An equally powerful question: Will the political impact be just as significant?

Clues to this may lie in the Ecuadorean Amazon, whose lands and politics have been transformed by devastating oil pollution wrought by Texaco and the country’s own national oil company, Petroecuador.

Twenty years ago, near the beginning of that transformation, I sat beside a campesino-turned-community activist, Segundo Jaramillo, as our small plane banked low over the company oil town of Lago Agrio.

Below lay the grimy hub of Texaco’s former operation in Ecuador, with its maze of pipelines, pumping stations, and Wild West bars. Mr. Jaramillo gripped his armrests and looked out the window nervously; it was his first flight.

Heartsick and angered by the oil-smeared landscape that surrounded his home and threatened his family’s health, he had come to Quito by an arduous bus ride through the Andes.

In the capital, he met with Texaco critics and antipetroleum activists, who introduced us. Now we were returning to the Amazon so he could show me his homeland.

In the coming days with Jaramillo and local indigenous leaders along the Napo and Aguarico rivers, I began to understand the extent of the damage.

Huge open pools of oil and toxic sludge were scattered throughout the rain forest, dumped unceremoniously by indifferent oil workers. Contaminated water supplies had Jaramillo’s neighbors complaining of skin diseases, nonstop headaches, and internal organ pain.

In the Cofan Indian village of Dureno, the Aguarico – “River of Rich Waters” – was so polluted that villagers could no longer bathe in it.

A young leader called Toribe told me the population of Cofanes in the area, once 70,000, had shrunk to 3,000 since the day “a large and noisy bird” – actually a Texaco helicopter – appeared in the early 1970s, scoping the then-pristine forest for places to drill. “Many fled from here,” the young indigenous activist told me. “The whole structure of our lives has changed.”

In all, according to the book “Amazon Crude Oil,” edited by the environmental lawyer Judith Kimerling, Texaco dumped 19 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the Amazon, while nearly 17 million gallons of crude – many more than in the Exxon-Valdez disaster – spilled from the main Amazon-Andes pipeline, which feeds tankers bound for the United States. The impact on public health is impossible to quantify, but one study, citing benzene contamination leaking from unlined pits, links oil production to 1,401 cancer deaths in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

The human toll of Ecuador’s toxic oil legacy helped remake the country’s politics.

Alliances among the nation’s indigenous groups, Ecuadorean social justice organizations, and the international environmental movement led to support for emerging leaders who sought to distance themselves from the country’s colonial past.

Ecuador, long the quintessential banana republic whose policies benefitted the US and a corrupt local elite, is now governed by a left-leaning president, Rafael Correa, who declared upon entering office that “many of the oil contracts are a true entrapment for the country.” (Many of the groups that helped bring Mr. Correa to power are now disillusioned with him.) One of Correa’s favorite targets is Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001 and which is now defending itself against a $27.3 billion class action lawsuit in a Lago Agrio courtroom.

In the US, political fallout from the BP disaster could be even more profound – eventually.

In theory, the sight of black goo, dying birds, and stressed fisher families across the Gulf Coast would compel support for comprehensive environmental laws.

In 1968, the blowout of a Unocal well off the coast of Santa Barbara – the BP blowout is 50 times bigger, and growing – sparked the first Earth Day celebrations, sweeping environmental legislation, and a ban on offshore drilling in California. But in the weird calculus of Washington, a Senate climate change bill may ironically be doomed because it no longer contains offshore drilling sweeteners for Republican supporters of Big Oil.

The “drill, baby, drill” advocates – including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who initially called the BP blowout an “act of God” – would keep tighter regulatory harnesses off oil drillers. Rather, they assign all of the blame to President Obama, calling this his Katrina, or even his Iran hostage crisis.

The withering critiques, combined with Mr. Obama’s overly cool and faltering initial response, are generating their own politics: More than half of Americans polled by Gallup call the president’s response “poor” or “very poor.”

These impressions could change before the November elections, depending on the level of the president’s involvement and the damage to the Gulf Coast. But if, as experts expect, this oil slick already the size of South Carolina eventually finds its way into the loop current, it will hook Florida and travel north, in somewhat diluted form, possibly all the way to Cape Hatteras, N.C. – depositing gooey oil pancakes on the beach and bringing newly angry communities into the politics of oil blowouts.

Much worse, more may be on the way. BP’s deep-water catastrophe is simply a “prelude to the Age of Tough Oil, a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources,” according to global energy expert Michael T. Klare. “Make no mistake,” Mr. Klare wrote recently in TomDispatch. “We’re entering the danger zone. And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.”

Indeed there is much more at risk here than short-term politics. We must come to grips with the consequences of our petroleum addiction, and with the comfortable lifestyle that floats on a sea of oil. This means aggressive tax incentives for solar and wind power, real progress on climate change, personal and national commitments to sharp energy conservation, and a ban on risky drilling.

Taken together, even these measures won’t wash our hands of the stain of oil – not when there are places like Ecuador whose lands become sacrifice areas for our way of life.

But the oil staining our own shores gives us an opportunity we simply can’t afford to ignore.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Boycott Big Oil? Prepare to give up your lifestyle
By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Fri Jun 11, 4:01 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Has the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico got you so mad you're ready to quit Big Oil?

Ready to park the car and take up bike-riding or walking? Well, your bike and your sneakers have petroleum products in them. And sure, you can curb energy use by shutting off the AC, but the electric fans you switch to have plastic from oil and gas in them. And the insulation to keep your home cool, also started as oil and gas. Without all that, you'll sweat and it'll be all too noticeable because deodorant comes from oil and gas too.

You can't even escape petroleum products with a nice cool fast-food milkshake — which probably has a petrochemical-based thickener.

Oil is everywhere. It's in carpeting, furniture, computers and clothing. It's in the most personal of products like toothpaste, shaving cream, lipstick and vitamin capsules. Petrochemicals are the glue of our modern lives and even in glue, too.

Because of that, petrochemicals are in our blood.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested humans for environmental chemicals and metals, it recorded 212 different compounds. More than 180 of them are products that started as natural gas or oil.

"It's the material basis of our society essentially," said Michael Wilson, a research scientist at the University of California Berkeley. "This is the Petrochemical Age."

Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton, who works with the government on oil spill chemistry, said: "There's nothing that we do on a daily basis that isn't touched by petrochemicals."

When in the movie "The Graduate" young Benjamin is given advice about the future, it comes in one word: plastics. About 93 percent of American plastics start with natural gas or oil.

"Just about anything that's not iron or steel or metal of some sort has some petrochemical component. And that's just because of what we've been able to do with it," said West Virginia University chemistry professor Dady Dadyburjor.

Nothing shows how pervasive and malleable petrochemicals are better than shampoo, said Kevin Swift, director of economics and statistics for the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry's trade association. The bottle is plastic. The cap is plastic. The seal and the label, too. The ink comes from petrochemicals and even the glue that holds the label to the bottle comes from oil or gas.

"The shampoo — it's all derived from petrochemicals," Swift said. "A bottle of shampoo is about 100 percent chemistry."

Just add a bit of natural fragrance.

What makes oil and natural gas the seed stock for most of our everyday materials is the element that is the essence of life: carbon.

The carbon atom acts as the spine with other atoms attaching to it in different combinations and positions. Each variation acts in new ways, Dadyburjor said.

John Warner, a former Polaroid scientist and University of Massachusetts chemistry professor, called petroleum "fundamentally a boring material" until other atoms are added and "you unleash a textbook of modern chemistry."

"Take a very complicated elegant beautiful molecule, bury it in the ground 100 million years, remove all the functionality and make hydrocarbons," said Warner, one of the founders of the green chemistry movement that attempts to be more ecologically sustainable. "Then take all the toxic nasty reagents and put back all the functional groups and end up with very complicated molecules."

The age of petrochemicals started and took root shortly after World War II, spurred by a government looking for replacements for rubber.

"Unfortunately there's a very dark side," said Carnegie Mellon chemistry professor Terry Collins. He said the underlying premise of the petrochemical industry is that "those little molecules will be good little molecules and do what they're designed for and not interact with life. What we're finding is that premise is wrong, profoundly wrong. What we're discovering is that there's a whole world of low-dose (health) effects."

Many of these chemicals are disrupting the human hormone system, Collins said.

These are substances that don't appear in nature and "they accumulate in the human body, they persist in the environment," Berkeley's Wilson said. The problem is science isn't quite sure how bad or how safe they are, he said.

But plastics also do good things for the environment, the chemistry council says. Because plastics are lighter than metals, they helped create cars that save fuel. A 2005 European study shows that conversion to plastic materials in Europe saved 26 percent in fuel.

"Compared to the alternatives, it reduces greenhouse gases (which cause global warming) and saves energy; that is rather ironic," Swift said.

Still, chemists who want more sustainable materials are working on alternatives. Another founder of green chemistry, Paul Anastas, an assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said: "We can make those things in other ways."

LSU's Overton is old enough to remember the days before petrochemicals. There were no plastic milk and soda containers. They were glass. Desks were heavy wood. There were no computers, cell phones and not much air conditioning.

"It's a much more comfortable life now, much more convenient," Overton said.

Swift said trying to live without petrochemicals now doesn't make sense, but he added: "it would make a good reality TV show."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100611/ap_on_sc/us_sci_oil_in_everything/print;_ylt=AuvM8GbEx9EGmoKO2ZR4egip_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Coast Guard to BP: Speed it up, stop the spill
By Jay Reeves And Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers 1 hr 31 mins ago

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – The Coast Guard has demanded that BP step up its efforts to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the weekend, telling the British oil giant that its slow pace in stopping the spill is becoming increasingly alarming as the disaster fouled the coastline in ugly new ways Saturday.

The Coast Guard sent a testy letter to BP's chief operating officer that said the company urgently needs to pick up the pace and present a better plan to contain the spill by the time President Barack Obama arrives on Monday for his fourth visit to the beleaguered coast. The letter, released Saturday, follows nearly two months of tense relations between BP and the government and reflects the growing frustration over the company's inability to stop the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

The dispute escalated on the same day that ominous new signs of the tragedy emerged on the beaches of Alabama. Waves of unsightly brown surf hit the shores in Orange Beach, leaving stinking, dark piles of oil that dried in the hot sun and extended up to 12 feet from the water's edge for as far as the eye could see.

It was the worst hit yet to Alabama beaches. Tar-like globs have washed up periodically throughout the disaster, but Saturday's pollution was significantly worse.

"This is awful," said Shelley Booker of Shreveport, La., who was staying in a condominium with her teenage daughter and her friends near the deserted beach about 100 miles from the site of the spill.

Scientists have estimated that anywhere between about 40 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since a drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. The latest cap installed on the blown-out well is capturing about 650,000 gallons of oil a day, but large quantities are still spilling into the sea.

The Coast Guard initially sent a letter to BP on Wednesday asking for more details on its plans to contain the oil. BP responded, saying a new system to trap much more oil should be complete by mid-July. That system's new design is meant to better withstand the force of hurricanes and could capture up to roughly 2 million gallons of oil daily when finished, the company said.

But Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. Watson said in a follow-up letter Friday he was concerned that BP's plans were inadequate, especially in light of revised estimates this week that indicated the size of the spill could be up to twice as large as previously thought.

"BP must identify in the next 48 hours additional leak containment capacity that could be operationalized and expedited to avoid the continued discharge of oil ... Recognizing the complexity of this challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process," Watson said in the letter addressed to chief operating officer Doug Suttles.

Suttles said the company will respond to the letter by Sunday night.

"We've got a team of people looking to see, can we accelerate some of the items that are in that plan and is it possible to do more," Suttles said in a brief interview after speaking to workers at a command center where he thanked BP employees and contractors for their work in cleaning up the spill. "There are some real challenges to do that, including safety."

Suttles also acknowledged that "there's big frustrations out there. They're out there in the community, they're out there in government, they're out there everywhere. And I think they're all rooted in the fact that none of us want this to happen. And none of us want this to occur, and we all want it to get fixed now."

The letter and deadline come just before Obama is set to visit the Gulf Coast on Monday and Tuesday. On Saturday, Obama reassured British Prime Minister David Cameron that his frustration over the oil spill in the Gulf was not an attack on Britain.

The two leaders spoke by phone for 30 minutes Saturday. Cameron also has been under pressure to get Obama to tone down the criticism, fearing it will hurt the millions of British retirees holding BP stock that has taken a beating in recent weeks.

Cameron's office said the prime minister told Obama of his sadness at the disaster, while Obama said he recognized that BP was a multinational company and that his frustration "had nothing to do with national identity."

BP is hard at work trying to find new ways to capture more oil, but officials say the only way to permanently stop the spill is a relief well that will drill sideways into the broken well and plug it with cement.

Right now, a containment cap sitting over a well pipe is siphoning off around 653,100 gallons of oil to a ship the ocean surface. That oil is then unloaded to tankers and taken ashore.

To boost its capacity, BP also plans to trap oil using lines that earlier shot heavy drilling mud deep into the well during a failed attempt to stop the flow. This time, those lines will work in reverse. Oil and gas from the well will flow up to a semi-submersible drilling rig where it will be burned in a specialized boom that BP estimates can vaporize a maximum 420,000 gallons of oil daily. Another ship should be in place by mid-July to process even more oil.

News that the federal government had given BP until the end of the weekend to speed up the oil containment was met with raised eyebrows and long sighs as locals gathered to barbecue, drink Budweiser and listen to classic rock at a fishing benefit in Pointe a la Hache, La.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Dominic Bazile, a firefighter.

On a Florida beach about 190 miles from the rig explosion, a stainless steel tank with markings that identified it as having come from the Deepwater Horizon washed up on shore. Bay County Sheriff Deputy Ray Maulbeck was working beach patrol Saturday when he came upon the wreckage. The Coast Guard and state environmental officials took the piece away.

Meanwhile, Gulf states affected by the disaster are putting the squeeze on BP, seeking to protect their interests amid talk of the possibility that BP may eventually file for bankruptcy.

The attorney general in Florida and the state treasurer in Louisiana want BP to put a total of $7.5 billion in escrow accounts to compensate the states and their residents for damages now and in the future. Alabama doesn't plan to take such action, while Mississippi and Texas haven't said what they will do.

As of the end of March, BP had only $6.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents available.

BP said in a statement that it is considering the Florida request. It didn't address the comments by the state treasurer in Louisiana.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=ApmuoArEBJWnojlASs24CHap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama tells Britain no hard feelings over spill
By Jill Lawless, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 12, 3:04 pm ET

LONDON – President Barack Obama reassured Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday that his frustration over the mammoth oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not an attack on Britain as the two leaders tried to soothe trans-Atlantic tensions over the disaster.

Cameron's Downing St. office said the two leaders held a "warm and constructive" telephone conversation for more than 30 minutes.

Obama has recently sharpened his criticism of BP PLC as the company struggles to stop millions of gallons of oil gushing from its ruptured deep-sea well. Cameron is under pressure to get Obama to tone down the rhetoric against of a major British company, fearing it will hurt millions of Britons — as well as many Americans — who hold BP stock in investments and pension plans.

Cameron's office said the prime minister "expressed his sadness at the ongoing human and environmental catastrophe," but stressed BP's economic importance to Britain, the U.S. and other countries.

It said Obama recognized that BP — which he has pointedly referred to in public by its former name, British Petroleum — is a multinational company, "and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity." Obama said he had no interest in undermining BP's value. The company's stock has lost 40 percent of its value since the oil rig fire on April 20 that unleashed the United States' worst oil spill.

Downing Street said the two men agreed that BP should continue "to work intensively to ensure that all sensible and reasonable steps are taken as rapidly as practicable to deal with the consequences of this catastrophe."

The Obama administration walked a careful line Saturday: trying to show toughness with BP, but also reassuring Britons that the president holds no animosity toward their country and institutions. The strategy could be risky if Obama's political opponents use it to reinforce claims that he has been too gentle and diplomatic in dealing with the oil company.

Before the Obama-Cameron phone call took place, the U.S. government told BP it has until the end of the weekend to speed up efforts to contain the oil spill.

Later, the White House let Cameron's office make the first public remarks about Saturday's phone call. Downing Street used the opportunity to stress that Obama is not attacking Britain and that he recognizes BP as a global firm.

When the White House finally released its official statement, only one of the 10 sentences referred to the oil spill. It said the two men discussed the impact of the spill, "reiterating that BP must do all it can to respond effectively to the situation."

Minutes later, a senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation, confirmed that the president had told Cameron "that our frustration has nothing to do with national identity" but focuses instead on "ensuring that a large, wealthy company lives up to its obligations."

The official said Obama told Cameron that BP "must meet its obligations to those whose lives have been disrupted," and that the administration "will insist everything be done to cap the well, capture the oil, and pay for the cleanup, the environmental damage done and the tens of thousands of economic claims as a result of this disaster."





BP has been ordered by the U.S. Coast Guard to speed up its efforts to stop oil gushing into the sea off the coast of Louisiana.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. Watson sent a letter to BP officials on Friday expressing frustration with the overall pace of the effort and ordered the company to identify ways to expedite the process in the next 48 hours.

Downing Street also said Cameron and Obama reaffirmed their belief in "the unique strength of the U.S.-UK relationship." It announced that Cameron will visit Washington July 20, his first trip there since taking office in May.

The warm words come after vocal criticism of BP by Obama, who has said he would have fired BP's top executive, if he were in charge, and has supported the idea that the oil company suspend its quarterly dividend.

In a sign the company feels the pressure, BP said Saturday that its board would meet Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known. BP said no decision had yet been made.

Obama also has reproached BP for spending money on a public relations campaign and occasionally refers to "British Petroleum," although the company years ago began using only its initials and is a far-reaching international corporation with extensive holdings in the United States, including a Texas refinery and a share of the Alaska oil pipeline.

This past week, the usually measured Obama said in a television interview, "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers — so I know whose ass to kick."

The angry words from Washington have produced a backlash in Britain, where BP is a corporate pillar. Millions of British retirees depend on BP dividends since pension funds are heavily invested in the oil company, the world's third-largest.

British officials began taking a more hands-on approach Friday, when Treasury chief George Osborne met BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, and Cameron spoke to Svanberg by phone.

Svanberg, who has faced criticism for not being more visible in BP's response to the Gulf spill, is to meet with Obama at the White House on Wednesday. Probably joining him will be CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives. It will be the first time Obama has met with BP officials since the crisis began.

Hayward will testify at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on Thursday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100612/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_us_britain/print;_ylt=ApmuoArEBJWnojlASs24CHap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf oil spill upping price for domestic shrimp
By Nicole Norfleet, Associated Press Writer Sat Jun 12, 3:21 am ET

RALEIGH, N.C. – U.S. shrimpers who comb seas unaffected by the oil-slickened Gulf are raising prices as demand for their catch rises, bringing a potential — but bittersweet — respite from some tough years.

"We are getting calls from buyers who haven't bought from us in awhile and who are offering more money," said Rutledge Leland, owner of Carolina Seafood in McClellanville, S.C.

Fishermen in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, whose waters have not been affected by oil, say prices for their shrimp have gone up as processing plants that normally buy Gulf seafood turn to other docks for their supply.

Leland, who is also the mayor of the small fishing town, said the price for frozen shrimp has increased about 30 percent in the last couple of months, a jump he said was aided by the April 20 Gulf spill that has closed about a third of federal waters in the Gulf to fishing boats for fear of contaminated seafood.

The federal government has declared fishery disasters for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, which could bring emergency payments for commercial fishermen.

While 90 percent of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. is imported from overseas, most domestic shrimp is caught in the Gulf.

Fishermen who work outside the closed waters say they're not pleased to profit from the misfortune spreading from the Gulf. "We rather see us win because we have the best product than by default because somebody went out of business," said Sean McKeon, president of the N.C. Fisheries Association, which represents fishermen and their families.

The price of wild American shrimp has plummeted over the years because of the recession and overseas competition, said John Wallace, who owns two shrimping boats in Darien, Ga. Last year, he took a $17,000 loss.

Wallace, the marketing director for the Georgia Shrimp Association, said local shrimpers have been getting calls from buyers who normally get their shrimp from the Gulf. If prices stay high, he estimated shrimpers in his area could make between $50,000 and $75,000 — helping some finally turn profits. "We as fishermen are eternal optimists," Wallace said. "We keep telling ourselves that next year will be better, next season will be better, next moon will be better."

Craig Wallis, a shrimper who has seven boats in Palacios, Texas, said his prices are rising even though his shrimping season does not begin until mid July. Wallis said he only expects to have enough shrimp to provide to his regular customers, but calls from needy new buyers are already helping him. "We don't have no excess to be sending stuff anywhere else," he said.

Despite the price spike, it's unclear if the trend will help the industry in the long run, said John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, an advocacy group. It's not known yet how much the spill will harm the national supply, he said. "If we are down substantially, I'm sure importers will try to step in and take some of the market share," Williams said.

In some cases, they already have.

James Clarkson, a chef at Clawson's 1905 Restaurant & Pub in Beaufort, N.C., has started importing shrimp from Asia instead of purchasing from Gulf fishermen. The restaurant serves about 200 pounds of shrimp a week, he said. Since the spill, a 50-pound case of shrimp has jumped more than 60 percent in price. "As soon as they had the accident, prices went right up," Clarkson said. "That cuts into the profits of our restaurant. It was killing us."

Doug Cross, owner of Grantsboro, N.C.-based seafood distributor Pamlico Packing Co., said potential profits for shrimpers from "panic buying" could be short-lived if restaurants determine their catch is too expensive and take the seafood off their menus. "It can fall off a cliff, crash," Cross said. "Restaurants can't afford up to so much for shrimp ... Somewhere there's a ceiling."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100612/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_commercial_fishing/print;_ylt=ApmuoArEBJWnojlASs24CHap_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil crisis could make governor's name
Mark Mardell |Tuesday, 8 June 2010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/jindalforprezEDIT.jpg

Crises can destroy reputations. They can also make them.

Outside the Southern Sting Tattoo Parlour in Lafourche country, owner Bobby Petrie uses art to make his point.

It's a mural showing a skeletal figure of death in tattered black robes looming over a map of the Gulf, the letters BP on its back. Next to it, a picture of President Barack Obama scattered with question marks, "what now?" across his forehead. But it is the small sign propped at the bottom that interests me: "Bobby Jindal for President".

Bobby Petrie is full of praise for Louisiana's governor.


"He's doing a real good job," he says. "He knows what we need. He knows what needs to be done to protect us. I don't think the president does, not in the way that Jindal does."

We are on the way to see Jindal at a news conference.

Louisiana's youthful governor was once seen as the Republicans' answer to Obama. He is an Ivy League intellectual, personable, the face of modern America, the son of Indian immigrants, with social and economic views that tick most conservative boxes.

Then he was chosen to answer the president's first State of the Union address and was widely thought to have bombed. Some wrote him off for good. I suspect they were wrong. This crisis is putting him back on the national map and is likely to be the making of him.

At a news conference at Grand Isle he pulls off something of a publicity coup. He was due to entertain the New Orleans Saints at the governor's mansion to celebrate their stunning win in the Super Bowl. Instead he's persuaded the team to go down to the Gulf coast and meet those suffering because of the oil leak.

He said this would be "fitting and symbolic". Indeed it is. The Saints were underdogs for a long while, then their stadium was home for many of those made homeless by Hurricane Katrina. Their victory was a huge source of pride for New Orleans.

But it's Jindal's passion that shines through. There's a certain lack of polish that some might see as a welcome absence of slickness. Southern accents should be drawled out slowly, but his delivery is machine-gun rapid. Words tumble over one another as though he's worried he will run out of time to make all his points.

He uses a piece of cardboard stuck with nine photographs to illustrate his point. Earlier, this rather old-school prop fell on the head of a CBS radio man who I noted - with pride in my profession - did not flinch or move his microphone.

Jindal had just been on a boat trip out to the wetlands where the oil is doing the most damage, taking a senior representative of BP with him.

"You have to smell it, touch it, see it for yourself," he says, noting the first thing you notice is "the deafening silence of the marsh that should be teeming with life".


He is passionate too about his plan to build berms, dredged-up isles of sand, to link barrier islands and the keep the oil away from the main shore line. He seems excited that the coast guard has approved more projects and BP has agreed to pay off the $36m build. As the man from BP makes the announcement some of Jindal's staff hug and the small crowd applauds. It's obviously an emotional time for the politicians of this state that has been through so much.

The mayors beside him praise his "unbelievable leadership" and say he's been "wonderful".

Jindal says the spill threatens a way of life but the people of Louisiana are resilient, strong and generous. He calls this crisis "a war". He could be one of the victors.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2010/06/oil_crisis_could_make_governor.html


The Republican party could do a lot worse than Governor Jindal, and given their track record from Richard Nixon forward, I'm sure they will.


You can compare Jindal's reaction and his focus to Obama or to the former LA governor or NO Mayor's to Katrina you see the difference.

Jindal has been proactive while Obama has dithered.


The one major party who has not been criticized is the environmental lobby. Oil drilling could be done in several safer places but there ignorance and lobbying power has stopped.

It is time for Obama to show courage open up Alaska and other field and Drill Baby Drill



I always said that Jindal's response to the president's address was not the end of his career. What Louisiana needed after Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin was a governor who could react appropriately to crisis situations and a competent mayor of New Orleans. Gov. Jindal showed us after Hurricane Gustav that he was the right man for the job, and he has done an outstanding job of handling the oil spill crisis to date.

I find that Jindal's manner and style of speaking, unusually fast for a southern politician, creates a sense of urgency and a sense that he is on top of things-an ability that Obama seems to have lost. It is also important that the Governor seems to understand the roles that the Federal Government can play and, more often than not, when to take advantage of Federal expertise and funding when the people of Louisiana demand it.

Jindal showed determination and initiative when he indicated with all the Mayors and Parish Presidents of South Louisiana that the state government was willing to act without Federal consent to protect the state's shoreline with dredged sand berms. He showed political cunning when the public instantly supported the sand berm idea and repeatedly demanded that the Feds quickly approve of it, which they reluctantly did.

So what does this mean for Gov. Bobby Jindal?
It means that he can provide more than hope, he can actually govern.


Louisiana Guv: The Ass Obama is Kicking is Ours
By Doug Powers • June 11, 2010 08:55 AM

The Louisiana Governor didn’t exactly put it that way, but that’s what he’s saying. Bobby Jindal is becoming increasingly peeved at the Obama administration’s response to the oil spill — particularly the drilling moratorium that is stepping on the oxygen hose of an economy that is already on life support.

Jindal says there’s “not a real understanding the way this [oil] industry works” in the Obama administration.

If only we still had a couple of evil — although at least experienced in the industry — oilmen in the White House. But they were gladly traded in so America could upgrade to Hope & Change, which is a much lower viscosity.

From HotAirPundit, here’s Jindal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_KlvUqY1x8&feature=player_embedded


Also check out Charlotte Randolf, President of Lafourche Parish LA, who says she was “used” by Obama. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It_ZWHCTU4E&feature=player_embedded



The other day I heard somebody (I can’t remember who) put Obama’s drilling moratorium this way: It’s like cancelling all trans-Atlantic crossings because the Titanic didn’t see an iceberg.


He told us he was going to put the coal companies out of business. I don’t remember if he promised the same to big oil but how convenient was this accident?

There was a terrible coal mine accident in West Virginia, now this. How soon until there’s a convenient nuclear accident?



What better way to destroy America than by crippling it’s economy through the destruction of its ability to produce fuel and other petroleum-related products. Brilliant you bloody Marxist traitors!

Criminal is no other way to put it. Barack Obama and his cabinet is in direct and overt violation of their oaths of office and at virtual war with the American economy. They must be removed from office and prosecuted immediately for treason. They are domestic enemies of the United States – no question about it now.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/10/experts-say-obama-misrepresented-views-justify-offshore-drilling-ban/

Salazar apologized to those experts Thursday. “The experts who are involved in crafting the report gave us their recommendation and their input and I very much appreciate those recommendations,” he said. “It was not their decision on the moratorium. It was my decision and the president’s decision to move forward.”

In a letter the experts sent to Salazar, they said his primary recommendation “misrepresents” their position and that halting the drilling is actually a bad idea.


The oil rig explosion occurred while the well was being shut down – a move that is much more dangerous than continuing ongoing drilling, they said.

They also said that because the floating rigs are scarce and in high demand worldwide, they will not simply sit in the Gulf idle for six months. The rigs will go to the North Sea and West Africa, possibly preventing the U.S. from being able to resume drilling for years.

They also said the best and most advanced rigs will be the first to go, leaving the U.S. with the older and potentially less safe rights operating in the nation’s coastal waters.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

[Jolie Rouge]

Spill relief well draws scrutiny
By Greg Bluestein And Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writers Sun Jun 13, 4:11 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – In the chaotic days after the oil rig explosion, BP engineers and federal regulators desperate to plug the blown-out well scrambled to complete plans for a pair of deepwater relief wells that represent the best chance to end the disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

But BP didn't begin drilling the relief well until 12 days after the start of the disaster as the company and government rushed through environmental reviews, permits and other plans. The government does not require oil companies to have relief well plans in place ahead of time, and the lack of planning cost the company valuable time to get the spill under control.

And the plan ultimately approved by the government offers virtually no details outlining the relief well effort or what dangers might lurk in the depths as the company drills 18,000 feet below the surface — the equivalent of 16 Eiffel Towers. Experts say the relief effort could be exposed to the same risks that caused the original well to blow out in catastrophic fashion, while potentially creating a worse spill if engineers were to accidentally damage the existing well or tear a hole in the undersea oil reservoir.

The gaps in the relief well process mirror other regulatory issues and oversights that have been exposed since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killed 11 workers and sent tens of millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf. The Associated Press earlier found that BP's voluminous spill plans for the Gulf and rig were riddled with omissions and glaring errors, leading to criticism that the company has essentially been making things up as it goes. Among the omissions were a lack of a clear plan for a relief well.

BP says the relief well has been a success and ahead of schedule, representing a welcome change for engineers who have been attempting one risky, untested maneuver after another. Relief wells are a more proven method in the industry, and engineers are comfortable and confident in the process.

Engineers plan to dig the well 18,000 feet below the surface and then drill sideways into the blown-out well and plug it with cement. Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production, said this week that more details would be released when the process nears completion in early August.

U.S. regulations are more lax than other countries when it comes to relief wells. In Canada, for example, energy companies must have plans and permits for relief wells before drilling is approved. These plans must describe exactly how engineers would drill a relief well if required to do so — down to identifying the drilling vessel and spelling out how long it would take.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point-man in the response, has taken it a step further, suggesting that it might be worth requiring oil companies to drill relief wells in tandem with the main well. He said the idea "would be a legitimate point to be raised" and put in front of a commission investigating drilling regulations.

That would be a considerable expense to oil companies — relief wells can cost $100 million.

In the Gulf disaster, BP officials put together relief well plans on the fly in the days after the explosion. BP submitted a relief well plan six days after the blowout. It began drilling the well on May 2 — 12 days after the explosion. The British oil giant also started drilling a second relief well on May 16 under pressure from the White House.

To get permits for the relief wells, the company used similar wording from earlier papers and submitted them to the federal Minerals Management Service. The plans lacked specifics about how it planned to drill the wells or how long it would take.

But the company underscored the danger of such hasty planning when it noted that a mishap could lead to another blowout that could leak more oil into the ocean. The permits also discuss a worst-case scenario that would involve inadvertently puncturing the reservoir.

BP did not respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for more information about their strategy and approach in drilling the wells.

"The plan on file mirrors what they were likely asked to do by MMS to get the approval — it's a pretty voluminous document that doesn't have a lot of meat on it," said Eric Smith, associate director of the Entergy-Tulane Energy Institute. "It's a bunch of people pushed for time, but then they've got pages of material about possible Co2 emissions, animals and archaeology. There's really no details about the relief wells."

Some oil company executives told the AP that submitting a "template procedure" with scant details is often necessary because the plans can change often depending on the type of relief well needed.

U.S. Department of Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the MMS "approved the relief wells in accordance with our regulations and requirements." She added that the agency has applied rigorous inspections and oversight of the entire relief well process, including having an inspector and engineer on site when BP conducted tests on the blowout preventers in the two wells.

"We applied additional testing and safety requirements to the drilling of the relief wells because the situation demanded both urgency but also precision and the highest level of oversight and safety. We weren't willing to let BP move forward with the relief wells without raising the bar for safety on those wells," she said.

Ira Leifer, a University of California, Santa Barbara researcher who is on the government team measuring the amount of oil spewing from the well, has raised questions about the safety of BP's efforts to stop and contain the leak, including the relief well.

He said the many unknowns about the flow rate and pressure and quantity of oil coming from the well make it difficult to "design and engineer safe oil recovery systems, such as the `cap,' nor design and engineer ultimate solutions safely such as the relief wells."

The company and outside experts alike say the tried-and-true method will eventually work, but it's no simple task. Engineers must drill more than three miles beneath the surface and hit a target only a few inches across before pumping in drilling fluids to plug the breached well.

As with any deepsea drilling effort, there are risks — including the potential for a blowout in the relief wells just like what happened in April. BP said in a filing that if a relief well were to blow out, each could spew 250,000 gallons more crude into the Gulf's waters each day — and force engineers to try to plug a new, separate leak.

The relief wells drilled into the blown-out Ixtoc well in Mexico three decades ago took about three months to quell the gusher. Engineers in the current spill are confident they can pull it off by August, although some are skeptical.

"The petroleum engineers seem pretty cocky about that," Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental studies. "It just strikes me that there are so many unknowns. My guess is that it's going to take more than one try."

The digging is a trial-and-error process. As the drill plunges deeper through the Earth's crust, crews will probe the area with a high-tech metal detector to guide their way to the shaft. If they punch it too far, engineers will have to reverse and then plug the hole with cement. Experts say each miss could take days or longer to fix.

"In order to do this perfectly you'd have to know exactly where the original well is," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. "And unfortunately the directional data that goes into this is not perfect."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100613/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_relief_wells/print;_ylt=A0wNdNpXnhVMBjwAkXCp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTBva jZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP deploys deepsea sensors to better measure spill
ByRay Henry And Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writers 9 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP mounted a more aggressive response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday as it started deploying undersea sensors to better measure the ferocious flow of crude while drawing up new plans to meet a government demand that it speed up the containment effort ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to the coast.

The financial ramifications of the disaster are growing by the day as the White House and states put pressure on BP to set aside billions of dollars to pay spill-related claims in a move that could quickly drain the company's cash reserves and hasten its path toward possible bankruptcy.

BP PLC spokesman Mark Proegler said the company would not make public its response due Sunday to a letter from the Coast Guard demanding that it intensify the efforts to stop the spill. One of the actions BP took Sunday was to use robotic submarines to begin positioning sensors inside the well to gauge how much oil is spilling.

The robots were expected to insert the pressure sensors through a line used to inject methanol — an antifreeze meant to prevent the buildup of icelike slush — into a containment cap seated over the ruptured pipe, BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

BP was installing the sensors at the request of a federal team of scientists tasked with estimating the flow. The necessary equipment was first identified last week, and the installation procedures were approved over the weekend, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Tony Russell, a spokesman for Rear Adm. Thad Allen, the top federal official in charge of the spill response. The work should be completed by Tuesday.

Scientists have wanted better data on the flow rate. But Russell said the installation of the sensors had to be timed so it did not interrupt the work of the containment cap. That cap was installed earlier this month and has been gradually brought toward its full capacity, although oil continues to escape the well.

Scientists haven't been able to pin down just how much oil is leaking into the Gulf, although the high-end estimates indicated the spill could exceed 100 million gallons. The government has stressed that the larger estimates were still preliminary and considered a worse-case scenario.

Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the oil spill, on Sunday said government officials think the best figures are from a middle-of-the-road estimate, which would put the spill at around 66 million gallons of oil. That is about six times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill.

BP is currently capturing about 630,000 gallons of oil a day, but hundreds thousands more are still escaping into the Gulf. The company has said that it could begin siphoning an additional 400,000 gallons a day starting Tuesday by burning it using a specialized boom being installed on a rig — and any new success would be welcome news for Obama as he returns to the Gulf.

The president was scheduled to arrive in the Gulf on Monday for a two-day visit that will be followed by a nationally televised address to the American people on Tuesday and a sit-down with BP executives Wednesday. The crisis has already become a crucial test for the Obama presidency as it takes a greater toll on his image with each day that more oil gushes into the sea.

"We're at a kind of inflection point in this saga, because we now know that, what essentially what we can do and what we can't do, in terms of collecting oil, and what lies ahead in the next few months," senior adviser David Axelrod said on NBC's "Meet the Press. "And he wants to lay out the steps that we're going to take from here to get through this, through this crisis."

Obama wants an independent, third party to administer an escrow account paid for by BP to compensate those with "legitimate" claims for damages. The amount of money set aside will be discussed during talks this week between the White House and BP, but the request will most definitely be in the billions.

Louisiana's treasurer has told The Associated Press that it wants $5 billion. Florida said it wants $2.5 billion.

"We are aware of the request," said BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams in London. She declined to comment further.

BP could have to tap its cash reserve to pay the fund while also borrow money to comply. That, however, presents a potential problem because the company's borrowing costs are likely to be a lot higher due to investor concerns.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100614/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_1276;_ylt=Ak5B9Tt_9XmpiMIEvRNiYU Kp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTE2dWRpNzlkBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bi1yLW ItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtYnBkZXBsb3lz

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama plans speech, victims fund for Gulf
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer Sun Jun 13, 3:49 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama demanded that BP set up a compensation fund for the oil-tainted Gulf Coast and prepared for his first Oval Office address to the nation as he tried to wrest control of the environmental disaster threatening to overwhelm his administration.

White House officials announced the steps Sunday as Obama prepared for his fourth visit to the tortured Gulf. They came at a pivotal moment in the catastrophe, with the enormity of the oil spill in sharper focus from more accurate measurements and no end in sight until relief wells are completed in August.

That means the nation must settle in for a long, hot summer of oil and gas spewing relentlessly from the ocean floor, driving residents to anger and despair, ruining precious marshlands, and poisoning pelicans, turtles and other wildlife.

For Obama, it is imperative that he try to help guide the country through the anguishing weeks ahead. After returning Tuesday from a trip to Alabama, Mississippi and Florida he will deliver a prime-time address from the Oval Office. It will be the first time he has used that most presidential of settings as a backdrop, underscoring the urgency of the moment.

"We're at a kind of inflection point in this saga, because we now know that, what essentially what we can do and what we can't do, in terms of collecting oil, and what lies ahead in the next few months," senior adviser David Axelrod said on NBC's "Meet the Press. "And he wants to lay out the steps that we're going to take from here to get through this, through this crisis."

Obama will use the speech to address the challenges associated with the oil spill, from cleanup to damages claims, and will reiterate the need for Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation stalled in the Senate.

The next day, Wednesday, Obama will convene his first meeting with BP PLC executives, expected to include the company's much-criticized CEO, Tony Hayward, who will also be grilled on Capitol Hill this week. At the meeting the president will tell company officials he expects them to establish a major compensation fund for people and companies damaged by the spill, to be administered by an independent panel, and that he will use his legal authority to ensure BP complies, White House officials said.

The White House said the size of the fund was to be determined, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., circulated a letter to other senators Sunday to be sent to BP asking for a $20 billion set-aside.

BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams in London said the company was aware of the White House's plans for an escrow account, but she declined to comment further.

Almost two months since BP's leased drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf, triggering the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the steps add up to Obama's most concerted efforts so far to assert leadership in face of the calamity. It remains to be seen whether he'll be able to win back the confidence of a skeptical public that's already seen potentially more than 100 million gallons of crude expelled into the Gulf, far outstripping the Exxon Valdez disaster. Estimates of the size of the spill have ratcheted up time and again even as BP tries to collect some portion of the spewing oil into containment ships at the surface.

With Gulf residents hurting and criticism raining in from Republicans, Obama will try to regain control of a story line, generated by residents and governors of the affected states among others, that he's not in command.

It's a hallmark of Obama's presidency that he's arriving with deliberation at the point where he tries to seize the moment, not reacting from the gut like President George W. Bush grabbing a bullhorn in the rubble of the Twin Towers after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush's speech in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina came sooner into that disaster than Obama's planned Oval Office speech, but it yielded miserably few results, a negative verdict that Obama still has a chance to avoid.

His Gulf trip Monday and Tuesday will take him to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the three Gulf states he has yet to visit, since his first three Gulf trips were all to Louisiana, the most heavily impacted state. He planned public events, visits to beaches and talks with local officials and residents. For the White House the next several days amount to exercising every tool at its disposal — an on-scene visit by the president, a speech from the Oval Office, the use of the power of the presidency to extract concessions from BP.

Alabama's governor, Bob Riley, complained Sunday that the response to the spill still amounted to "trying to manage this through a committee form." But Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, offered a note of thanks.

"You know, whether you're in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana or in my Florida, it's important to have the leader of the free world come down here and pay attention to what's happening," Crist said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "So we're grateful that he is."

The White House can only hope that sentiment will resonate with — and perhaps be echoed by — the public in the months ahead.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100613/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama/print;_ylt=Aiq1DyMpD5UNAOCEexzVegQGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama to Tea Partiers: See! The Gulf Disaster is What Smaller Government Will Get You
By Doug Powers • June 12, 2010 11:29 AM

When you’re stuck in quicksand — or even a vat of thick oil for that matter — the first pointer in the survival manual is not to flail. President Obama hasn’t read that manual: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38447.html


The president also implied that anti-big government types such as tea party activists were being hypocritical on the issue.

“Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much,” Obama said. “Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.”

Is the president saying that he didn’t react quickly because he was trying to placate Tea Party activists, thus blaming them for the slow response?

Obama almost makes it sound like he let the Gulf die to make a point against those who are for smaller, more responsible government, doesn’t he?

Besides, the whole argument is bogus, desperate, and perhaps eventually counterproductive for Obama.

Dan Riehl: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/06/obama-the-tea-party-dumped-the-oil-into-the-gulf.html


Patently false. If the Tea Party mentality held sway, we’d be drilling in ANWR and closer to the shore in shallower water, so this disaster would never have happened. He’s opening the door for even more attacks over how government overreach creates problem like this.

On top of that, it was Obama who was talking about more drilling just before the rig explosion. Is he now saying that was a bad idea, he simply pushed for pure politics? Americans are smart enough to know there’s a big difference between how the government reacts in a major disaster, or a war, versus how it encroaches into their lives more and more on any given day.

‘Nuff said.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe


Obama: Gulf Spill Echoes 9/11 — FORE!
By Doug Powers • June 13, 2010 10:03 PM

You wouldn’t think it would be difficult for President Obama to understand why his response to the Gulf oil spill leaves many of us more baffled than Joe Biden in a Dunkin Donuts with no Indians behind the counter. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13757367/

Obama skipped the memorial service of those killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion to attend a fundraiser for Barbara Boxer. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/11/president-headed-to-fundraiser-during-gulf-memorial-service/?fbid=uTOM9FkCthv This morning, Obama compared the spill to 9/11 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38468.html and right after comparing the oil spill to the most deadly attack on American soil, he went golfing http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/06/obama-tells-politico-the-oil-spill-is-like-9-11-then-goes-golfing-for-4-hours/ for four hours.


“Not one man on this force will rest for one minute until the people who did this are behind bars! Now let’s go grab a bite to eat…”
–Lt. Frank Drebin



9/11 — you remember that day, when people died in an accident caused by airliners taking maintenance short-cuts combined with government environmental regulations that made buildings taller than they should be followed by the president using the tragedy as justification to pass Cap & Trade. The similarities to the Gulf spill are uncanny!


In any case, BP’s 48 hour deadline is up http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-house-turns-up-heat-on-bp-with-flurry-of-new-demands-1999651.html and, as promised, Obama plans to lead a dramatic return to the Gulf tomorrow http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/08/obama-return-gulf-evaluate-effort-contain-oil-spill/


And, on this topic, here’s the quote of the day. These weasels must snicker when they write this stuff: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-house-turns-up-heat-on-bp-with-flurry-of-new-demands-1999651.html


Fifty-four Democratic senators wrote to BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, demanding that BP put an initial $20bn into a ring-fenced fund. Although BP has pledged to pay clean-up costs and damages, “history has taught us that corporations often fail to live up to their initial promises”, the lawmakers wrote. They demanded a response by Friday.


Corporations don’t come through on their promises nearly as often as politicians — luckily the Democrats are on it. We’re in good hands here.


**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe



Here is how this spill is being managed.

Adm. Thad Allen complais he does not have enough skimmers and other equipment.

Many foreign nations have volunteered personnel and equipment to assist in the cleanup, but are precluded from doing so by the Jones Act of 1920 that prevents it.

This act can be suspended by the President. The last time it was done was during Katrina. When Thad Allen and the White House were asked why the President has not suspended the Jones Act te answr has been the same; “No one has asked us too.”

The on site commander and the White House know they are short equipment. The equipment is available. They will not suspend an antiquated law to get the gear.


Why?

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama plans fourth tour of Gulf oil spill
By Bianca Werner, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 50 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Struggling to show leadership in a crisis, President Barack Obama is embarking on a three-state tour of Gulf Coast states tainted by oil before speaking to the nation about the country's worst environmental disaster and what to expect in the weeks ahead.

Before the start Monday of a two-day trip to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, the White House announced Obama would order BP to establish a major victims' compensation fund. When he returns to Washington on Tuesday evening Obama will use his first Oval Office speech as president to address the catastrophe.

BP said in a statement that its costs for responding to the spill had risen to $1.6 billion, including new $25 million grants to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. It also includes the first $60 million for a project to build barrier islands off the Louisiana coast. The estimate does not include future costs for scores of damage lawsuits already filed.

Obama's first three trips to the Gulf took him to the hardest-hit state, Louisiana. On Monday, Day 56 since BP's leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and unleashed a fury of oil into the Gulf, he's flying to Gulfport, Miss. From there he'll travel along the coast to Alabama, where oil was washing up in heavy amounts along the shores Sunday in the eastern part of the state.

He'll be met by state and local officials eager for him to show command, provide manpower and supplies and also tell the public that despite the catastrophe that's crippling the fishing and tourist trades, many beaches are still open.

The day includes a speech and a ferry ride to view barrier islands in Alabama where oil has come ashore. Obama has not taken to the water in his previous Gulf visits.

The administration said early Monday that BP had responded to a letter sent over the weekend asking the company to speed up its ability to capture the spewing oil.

In its response, BP said it would target containing more than 2 million gallons of oil a day by the end of June, up from about 630,000 gallons of crude a day now. High-range estimates from researchers advising the government say as much as 2.1 million gallons a day could be billowing from BP's runaway well.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley planned to ask the president for more leadership and coordination.

"Essentially we're trying to manage this through a committee form, and it's a committee where any one member has absolute veto power," Riley said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I don't think you can do that." He said: "I think we're going to have to set priorities. We're going to have to implement a plan to achieve those goals if we're going to get through this."

Although BP is now siphoning off significant amounts of oil from its well 5,000 feet below the ocean's surface, the leak won't be killed for good until relief wells are completed in August. At the same time more accurate estimates of the spill have brought the enormity of the disaster into focus. Already potentially more than 100 million gallons of crude expelled into the Gulf, far outstripping the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Now the nation may have to settle in for a long, hot summer of oil and gas spewing relentlessly from the ocean floor, driving residents to anger and despair, ruining precious marshlands, and poisoning pelicans, turtles and other wildlife.

For Obama, it is imperative that he try to help guide the country through what's to come. Obama will aim to accomplish that with his speech Tuesday and also detail specifics of the response to the oil spill, from cleanup to damages claims.

The next day, Wednesday, Obama will convene his first meeting with BP PLC executives, expected to include the company's much-criticized CEO, Tony Hayward. The president will tell company officials he expects them to establish a multibillion-dollar compensation fund for people and companies damaged by the spill, to be administered by an independent panel, and that he will use his legal authority to ensure BP complies, White House officials said.

BP was convening a board meeting Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known. BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams in London said the company was aware of the White House's demand for a compensation fund, but declined to comment further.

The steps add up to Obama's most concerted efforts so far to assert leadership in face of the calamity, with the White House exercising every tool at its disposal — an on-scene visit by the president, a speech from the Oval Office, the use of the power of the presidency to extract concessions from BP. The White House hopes it will be enough to win back the confidence of a skeptical public.

James Carville, a leading Clinton administration political adviser, said Tuesday night's speech gives Obama "a chance to hit the reset button" on the administration's posture regarding the spill.

He said he believes the American people are anxiously awaiting Obama's talk, but that the president has "to show that he's on top of this, that there's a strategy in place." Carville commented Monday morning on ABC's "Good Morning America."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100614/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama/print;_ylt=Aiq1DyMpD5UNAOCEexzVegSp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil spill spreads in Louisana.'s big, rich Barataria Bay
By Cain Burdeau And Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 15 mins ago

BARATARIA BAY, La. – The sand dunes and islands of Barataria Bay, a huge expanse of water and marsh on Louisiana's coast, have become the latest casualty of the environmental disaster spewing from BP's offshore well. And fishermen are bitter.

Oil-caked birds, stranded sea turtles, globs of gooey brown crude on beaches, coated crabs and mats of tar have been found throughout the inlets and mangroves that dot the bay. The oil has coated the water with a rainbow sheen and is threatening the complex web of wetlands, marshes and bayous that make up this ecological and historic treasure.

Everything from crabbing to bait fishing is shutting down, and the anger on the bayou is palpable.

"It's scary, you know, man," marine mechanic Jimmy Howard said from his hurricane-battered fishing shack, a cigar stub stuffed in his mouth. "I see them doing what they can, you know. All the boats going out, all the boom. I'm hoping they can contain it."

Barataria teems with wildlife, including alligators, bullfrogs, bald eagles and migratory birds from the Caribbean and South America. There are even Louisiana black bears in the upper basin's hardwood forests.

Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, oyster and shrimp boats plowed through these productive bays as fishermen snapped up speckled trout and redfish within minutes of casting their lines.

Now it resembles an environmental war zone. Many of the bay's nesting islands for birds are girded by oil containment boom, and crews in white disposable protective suits change out coils of absorbents to soak up the sticky mess.

"The whole place is full of oil," said fishing guide Dave Marino. "This is some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil's coming in just wave after wave. It's hard to stomach, it really is."

At the entrance to Barataria, dredges and bulldozers are building sand berms on barrier islands to intercept the advancing oil. National Guard helicopters drop sandbags into breaches smashed through the islands by hurricanes, and local officials are moving in barges to use as makeshift barriers.

Shrimp boats have been enlisted in the skimming effort — the Coast Guard says about 2,450 barrels of oily water have been picked up. But it's bittersweet work for the shrimpers, whose fishing grounds have been shut down.

"We got little otter families that swim in and out, we got 'coons — all that good stuff, man," Howard said. "It's good for the kids out here. Keeps them off the streets. They swim, work on the boats, fish."

Barataria has played a vital role in Louisiana history. It is where the pirate and Battle of New Orleans hero Jean Lafitte established his colony of Baratarians. The estuary was also the setting for "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin. Like other wealthy 19th-century New Orleanians, Chopin spent summers on Grand Isle, to the bay's south, and made the evocative island a focus of her work.

Barataria was a wild place back then. It was covered in virgin cypress trees, some believed to be thousands of years old. Throughout the marsh and forests, shrimp-processing towns and American-Indian settlements hummed with activity in the bay, which is at the heart of a 1.5 million-acre delta basin formed 3,000 years ago.

But heavy erosion has been pushing the bay closer to the brink of collapse in recent years.

Since the damming of Bayou Lafourche in 1904 cut off a supply of fresh water and nutrients, Barataria has declined rapidly. About 500 square miles of marsh, mangrove, mudflats, sand ridges and cypress forest have been lost to the encroaching salt water of the Gulf. It's a familiar story in coastal Louisiana, where 2,000 square miles of wetlands have been lost since the 1930s.

Scientists fear the oil may overwhelm Barataria's remaining defenses, already stressed by erosion.

"There is no good estuary to spill oil in, but this estuary is particularly fragile," said Mark Schexnayder, marine biologist with the Louisiana Sea Grant program, an affiliate of Louisiana State University.

C.C. Lockwood, a wildlife photographer whose iconic images of the vanishing coast are a coffee-table feature, has been out in the slick capturing its impact.

"It looks to me like the roots (of marsh plants) are pretty much smothered and they will die at the edges," Lockwood said. "I saw what I counted to be about 1,000 dead hermit crabs. I saw blue crabs with faces covered in oil."

Scientists generally agree it will be years before the effect of the oil settling into the food chain will be known, but not all see an apocalyptic outcome.

"The idea that all oil coming into contact with a mangrove or wetlands is lethal and will kill it is not true," said Roy "Robin" Lewis III, a Florida-based ecologist who's studied oil spills in mangroves for 40 years. "I would not say that you are looking at a doomsday situation."

Still, death is taking place — most of it invisible to the eye.

"Once the mousse, the floating oil gets in there and oils the seagrass there are many different types of organisms that live in the sediment," said Richard Pierce, director of the Center for Ecotoxicology at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Fla. "Essentially they will die and that can last for years."

Local leaders say the environmental damage could have been prevented if decisive action had been taken as soon as the well blew out. Within a week of the rig explosion, parish officials wanted to block the passes, but those plans were stymied by government hesitation and concerns by ecologists.

The oil finally breached into the bay around May 20, a month after the explosion.

Now, the oil is inside — in the marshes and wetlands — and people are angry.

"I'm pissed — and you can print that," said Donna Hollis, 39, hanging out in a tank-top and with a cigarette at Jimmy Howard's camp in Wilkinson Canal.

She echoed Jefferson Parish council chairman John Young: "This is a battle. Oil's our enemy right now. This is going to destroy the livelihoods of these people in south Louisiana."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_barataria/print;_ylt=Aiq1DyMpD5UNAOCEexzVegSp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama's Not Our Daddy
by Tina Brown


The president speaks to the nation Tuesday from the Oval Office. How he can calm us down without losing his cool.

President Obama is now on a TV binge to show that he is aggressively on top of the oil spill crisis. Today he’s in the Gulf. Tomorrow night he’s doing a primetime Oval Office address to the nation, his first. It’s his pattern to hang back from doing media until there’s nothing on but commentators and cable shouters demanding that he show us he cares. Then, as the audience does a slow clap, he trounces the critics with a charismatic big speech.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. Tomorrow he’s announcing something concrete—an escrow account out of BP to get the cash to all the Gulf workers whose livelihoods have been trashed. But will this be deemed leaderly enough to assuage the angst among his supporters that the oil gushing into the Gulf is seeping away like his presidential potency? Obama fans become more and more glum that he keeps flubbing the very role he was expected to be so good at: Therapist to the nation. The Great Comforter.

What Obama lacks in Big Daddy empathy skills he has to make up for in raw politics.

The irony is that George W. Bush played the Daddy role with conviction. He grabbed a bullhorn at the World Trade Center and said, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." When he went to West Point and made speeches, there was no dispiriting nuance to his message to the troops. We were over there in Iraq to kick ass and take names.

We know what happened next. Just as we also know now about a lot of things Bush was so commander-in-chiefy about. How the new Homeland Security agency he announced with such fanfare soon ballooned from the “agile and elite staff of 300 people reporting to the Director of National Intelligence…who would break up the bureaucratic layers” recommended by the 9/11 Commission to a bloated 2,000 staff members so confused about their chain of command that in a new report Peggy Noonan highlighted on Saturday cites an unidentified Justice Department source who claims: "We are totally unprepared......Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it."

We also know that Bush stuffed agencies charged with overseeing our safety, like FEMA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, with incompetent political cronies—nothing nuanced about that—and that under the Bush-Cheney rule of Big Oil the Minerals Management Service agency became a crew of corrupt, lethargic backscratchers signing off on egregious lapses in offshore drilling safety in return for the usual cheesy perks of the good ol’ boy business culture. (If you want a laugh, take a look at the picture in Rolling Stone this month of the now-former MMS associate director Chris Oynes. Even the most foaming liberal movie director would hesitate to cast this 300-pound Rush Limbaugh lookalike clamped in a necktie.)

Obama can’t change his cool disposition though it would be nice if he lost the vaguely grudging air he gives off that problems of management get in the way of ideas. What he lacks in Big Daddy empathy skills he just has to make up for in raw politics. Bill Clinton was the master of that, mostly because unlike Obama he enjoyed it. By now Clinton would have reached out to every one on the planet (even James Cameron) who knew anything about deep sea drilling and absorbed those competing opinions into the radar of his responses. He would have convened all those Republican Gulf State governors at the White House right away, and in doing so won political points for showing the true meaning of bipartisanship. He would have summoned not just this new BP character, the faceless chairman, but the familiar, juicy target, Tony Heyward—if only so the public could see the delinquent CEO ordered like a chastened schoolboy to the principal’s office. He would have convened not just BP but all the other oil companies to force out the best ideas in a fanfared Oval Office meeting. And for sure he would have called James Carville personally and got his yelling fetus-face off CNN. That alone would make us all feel better about what really ails us all: The feeling that the black, gushing oil spill is a huge and terrifying metaphor for the loss of American power, an overwhelming karmic punishment for the profligacy of our civilization as we burn up billions of dollars of biological material in a few short hours.

Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-14/barack-obamas-gulf-spill-oval-office-speech/

[Jolie Rouge]

Supply shortages slowing Gulf oil spill cleanup
Jay Reeves, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 40 mins ago

MOBILE, Ala. – As countless tar balls washed ashore on a beach along Alabama's Gulf Coast, cleanup workers sat and watched because they didn't have the proper plastic covers to protect their shoes. Elsewhere, a crew using shovels and garden rakes worked for hours on a long stretch of sand that a machine could have cleaned in minutes.

Almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages of government-required protective gear and cleaning equipment are slowing work to remove the sticky mess and keep beaches and marshes along the Gulf Coast safe and oil-free.

BP says it's doing all it can to keep supplies stocked and has had to turn to foreign companies for help. But with demand so high for everything from plastic gloves, to oil-blocking booms and sand-sifting machines, finding enough items to outfit workers and protect the coast is an unending task.

As the oil first stained the Alabama coast, officials say some people hired to pick up tar balls off the sand couldn't lift a finger because they didn't have the bright yellow boot covers that have since become ubiquitous on the beach. The workers eventually got the booties, and now, it sometimes seems like there are more of them on the sand than bare feet.

BP also is still trying to find additional sand-sifting machines, which are capable of cleaning long areas of beach in minutes rather than the hours it takes to do the work by hand. The company didn't even know they existed until Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft recently showed off one operated by the city.

Coast Guard Lt. Erik Halvorson, a spokesman for the unified area command overseeing the spill response, said shortages haven't caused any major slowdowns in the cleanup, and large orders have been placed in advance when needs are anticipated.

"I believe that any response work delays ... are localized and short term, not widespread," he said.

Late Monday, BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press that the company has contracted with actor Kevin Costner and Ocean Therapy Solutions to use 32 of their centrifuge machines that are designed to separate oil from water.

"We recognized they had potential and put them through testing, and that testing was done in shallow water and in very deep water and we were very pleased by the results," Salvin said.

He added that the machines will be among the many tools it is using to try to respond to the spill.

Ronnie Hyer's company, Gulf Supply Co. of Mobile, has become a major supplier of safety equipment and other gear being used all over the Gulf Coast — but finding enough supplies has become a daily struggle.

"This is worse than a hurricane," said Hyer. "This is a never-ending hurricane."




One day the shortage may be white disposable coveralls worn by cleaning crews, Hyer said, while the next day it might be gloves. Both are required under rules set out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he said, so crews can't work without them.

"There's no chain, no rope. There's a shortage of steel posts in this area," he said. "They found some in Houston."

When Hyer's company finds an item, it buys in bulk. Pallets and storage shelves all around Gulf Supply's site in northern Mobile are full of sun screen, coveralls, degreaser, toilet paper, trash bags, ice coolers, shovels, rakes and orange vests. A trailer is loaded with shovels and rakes, and they found boot covers — 70,000 of them.

"They called yesterday and wanted 350 kitty litter scoops," said Hyer. "They clean the sand with them."

Many of the items in Hyer's warehouse are stamped "Made in China." Though BP says it tries to buy from American manufacturers, sometimes it's impossible.

"Where critical material is not available and will not be available in any reasonable period of time we have literally scoured the globe," said BP executive vice president Chris Sliger.

For example, BP's purchasers have bought boom in several countries including the U.K., Norway, the Middle East, Brazil and China — "literally every place we can get it in the world," Sliger said.

But in the wetlands and marshes inside the barrier islands near Grand Isle, La., all that boom is having mixed results. It works in some places, holding back oil. But in many areas, there isn't any boom and the shorelines are awash in sticky, brown crude. "What really hits me the most is the lack of manpower and the lack of equipment," said Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young.

BP spokesman Michael R. Abendhoff said the company has called in boom from all over the world and manufacturers working overtime to supply more. "The hard boom is cleaned and reused," Abendhoff said. "The soft boom has to be replaced with new boom when it's oil soaked. The demand is unending now."

Around the Gulf, supplies are being stockpiled and shipped out of 17 different staging areas from coastal Louisiana to Port St. Joe, Fla., according to Halvorson. President Barack Obama visited one of the largest on Monday near Theodore, Ala.

Sliger said BP is trying to buy additional sand-sifting machines, which are pulled behind tractors down the beach. Work will speed up considerably once those are available, he said. "I believe ... that we purchased five more, and we're trying to find as many more as we can," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_supply_shortages

[Jolie Rouge]

Documents: BP cut corners in days before blowout
Matthew Daly And Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers – 13 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP made a series of money-saving shortcuts and blunders that dramatically increased the danger of a destructive oil spill in a well that an engineer ominously described as a "nightmare" just six days before the blowout, according to documents released Monday that provide new insight into the causes of the disaster.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released dozens of internal documents that outline several problems on the deepsea rig in the days and weeks before the April 20 explosion that set in motion the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Investigators found that BP was badly behind schedule on the project and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars with each passing day, and responded by cutting corners in the well design, cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of key safety devices.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig," said Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak.

The missteps emerged on the same day that President Barack Obama made his fourth visit to the Gulf, where he sought to assure beleaguered residents that the government will "leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before."

Obama's two-day trip to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida represents his latest attempt to persevere through a crisis that has served as an important early test of his presidency. The visit coincides with a national address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night in which he will announce new steps to restore the Gulf Coast ecosystem, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the president's announcements.

"I can't promise folks ... that the oil will be cleaned up overnight. It will not be," Obama said after encouraging workers in hard hats as they hosed off and repaired oil-blocking boom. "It's going to be painful for a lot of folks."

But, he said, "things are going to return to normal."

The breached well has dumped as much as 114 million gallons of oil into the Gulf under the worst-case scenario described by scientists — a rate of more than 2 million a day. BP has collected 5.6 million gallons of oil through its latest containment cap on top of the well, or about 630,000 gallons per day.

But BP believes it will see considerable improvements in the next two weeks. The company said Monday that it could trap a maximum of roughly 2.2 million gallons of oil each day by the end of June as it deploys additional containment efforts, including a system that could start burning off vast quantities as early as Tuesday. That would more than triple the amount of oil it is currently capturing — and be a huge relief for those trying to keep it from hitting the shore.

"It would be a game changer," said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Mark Boivin, deputy director for near-shore operations at a command center in Mobile. He works with a team that coordinates the efforts of roughly 80 skimming boats gathering oil off the coast.

Still, BP warned its containment efforts could face problems if hoses or pipes clog and engineers struggle to run the complicated collection system. Early efforts at the bottom of the Gulf failed to capture oil.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators have identified several mistakes by BP in the weeks leading up to the disaster as it fell way behind on drilling the well.

BP started drilling in October, only to have the rig damaged by Hurricane Ida in early November. The company switched to a new rig, the Deepwater Horizon, and resumed drilling on Feb. 6. The rig was 43 days late for its next drilling location by the time it exploded April 20, costing BP at least $500,000 each day it was overdue, congressional documents show.

As BP found itself in a frantic race against time to get the job done, engineers took several time-saving measures, according to congressional investigators.

In the design of the well, the company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities to provide a barrier to the flow of gas in space surrounding steel tubes in the well, documents and internal e-mails show. The decision saved BP $7 million to $10 million; the original cost estimate for the well was about $96 million.

In an e-mail, BP engineer Brian Morel told a fellow employee that the company is likely to make last-minute changes in the well.

"We could be running it in 2-3 days, so need a relative quick response. Sorry for the late notice, this has been nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," Morel wrote.

The e-mail chain culminated with the following message by another worker: "This has been a crazy well for sure."

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 "centralizers" to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "Who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."

The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a "cement bond log" that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20.

Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.

BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.

Asked about the details disclosed from the investigation, BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the company's main focus right now is on the response and stopping the flow of oil. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment while an investigation is ongoing," Proegler told AP. BP executives including CEO Tony Hayward will be questioned by Congress on Thursday.

The letter from Waxman and Stupak noted at least five questionable decisions BP made before the explosion, and was supplemented by 61 footnotes and dozens of documents.

"The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety," said Waxman and Stupak. Waxman, D-Calif., chairs the energy panel while Stupak, D-Mich., heads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_1293;_ylt=AlS9Em9VLwYXzT4bhHLSY_ 2p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTE2cGI2ZHNmBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bi1yLW ItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtZG9jdW1lbnRz

[Jolie Rouge]

Documents: BP cut corners in days before blowout
Matthew Daly And Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers – 13 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP made a series of money-saving shortcuts and blunders that dramatically increased the danger of a destructive oil spill in a well that an engineer ominously described as a "nightmare" just six days before the blowout, according to documents released Monday that provide new insight into the causes of the disaster.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released dozens of internal documents that outline several problems on the deepsea rig in the days and weeks before the April 20 explosion that set in motion the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Investigators found that BP was badly behind schedule on the project and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars with each passing day, and responded by cutting corners in the well design, cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of key safety devices.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig," said Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak.

The missteps emerged on the same day that President Barack Obama made his fourth visit to the Gulf, where he sought to assure beleaguered residents that the government will "leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before."

Obama's two-day trip to Mississippi, Alabama and Florida represents his latest attempt to persevere through a crisis that has served as an important early test of his presidency. The visit coincides with a national address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night in which he will announce new steps to restore the Gulf Coast ecosystem, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage the president's announcements.

"I can't promise folks ... that the oil will be cleaned up overnight. It will not be," Obama said after encouraging workers in hard hats as they hosed off and repaired oil-blocking boom. "It's going to be painful for a lot of folks."

But, he said, "things are going to return to normal."

The breached well has dumped as much as 114 million gallons of oil into the Gulf under the worst-case scenario described by scientists — a rate of more than 2 million a day. BP has collected 5.6 million gallons of oil through its latest containment cap on top of the well, or about 630,000 gallons per day.

But BP believes it will see considerable improvements in the next two weeks. The company said Monday that it could trap a maximum of roughly 2.2 million gallons of oil each day by the end of June as it deploys additional containment efforts, including a system that could start burning off vast quantities as early as Tuesday. That would more than triple the amount of oil it is currently capturing — and be a huge relief for those trying to keep it from hitting the shore.

"It would be a game changer," said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Mark Boivin, deputy director for near-shore operations at a command center in Mobile. He works with a team that coordinates the efforts of roughly 80 skimming boats gathering oil off the coast.

Still, BP warned its containment efforts could face problems if hoses or pipes clog and engineers struggle to run the complicated collection system. Early efforts at the bottom of the Gulf failed to capture oil.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators have identified several mistakes by BP in the weeks leading up to the disaster as it fell way behind on drilling the well.

BP started drilling in October, only to have the rig damaged by Hurricane Ida in early November. The company switched to a new rig, the Deepwater Horizon, and resumed drilling on Feb. 6. The rig was 43 days late for its next drilling location by the time it exploded April 20, costing BP at least $500,000 each day it was overdue, congressional documents show.

As BP found itself in a frantic race against time to get the job done, engineers took several time-saving measures, according to congressional investigators.

In the design of the well, the company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities to provide a barrier to the flow of gas in space surrounding steel tubes in the well, documents and internal e-mails show. The decision saved BP $7 million to $10 million; the original cost estimate for the well was about $96 million.

In an e-mail, BP engineer Brian Morel told a fellow employee that the company is likely to make last-minute changes in the well.

"We could be running it in 2-3 days, so need a relative quick response. Sorry for the late notice, this has been nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," Morel wrote.

The e-mail chain culminated with the following message by another worker: "This has been a crazy well for sure."

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 "centralizers" to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "Who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."

The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a "cement bond log" that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20.

Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.

BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.

Asked about the details disclosed from the investigation, BP spokesman Mark Proegler said the company's main focus right now is on the response and stopping the flow of oil. "It would be inappropriate for us to comment while an investigation is ongoing," Proegler told AP. BP executives including CEO Tony Hayward will be questioned by Congress on Thursday.

The letter from Waxman and Stupak noted at least five questionable decisions BP made before the explosion, and was supplemented by 61 footnotes and dozens of documents.

"The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety," said Waxman and Stupak. Waxman, D-Calif., chairs the energy panel while Stupak, D-Mich., heads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_1293;_ylt=AlS9Em9VLwYXzT4bhHLSY_ 2p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTE2cGI2ZHNmBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bi1yLW ItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtZG9jdW1lbnRz

[Jolie Rouge]

Behind the theatrics of Obama's Oval Office debut
47 mins ago

With columnists and pundits critiquing the administration's response to the BP oil spill, President Obama made several notable media appearances in recent weeks — touring the Gulf region, holding a White House news conference and talking tough on the "Today" show.

But in a few hours, in his first Oval Office address — broadcast Tuesday night across all the major networks — Obama takes the White House's public response to another level. Democratic and Republican political consultants tell Yahoo! News that an Oval Office address can be one of the most effective uses of presidential stagecraft — underscoring the historical significance of the ongoing disaster. "He's showing the country that he's putting the whole force of his presidency behind this crisis," said Paul Begala, a Democratic consultant and CNN analyst.

"As an old White House hand, I understand the power of this symbolism," added Begala, who was an adviser to President Clinton. "And believe me, it's intentional."

That symbolism isn't lost on strategists on the other side of the aisle. Public Strategies Vice Chairman Mark McKinnon, who handled media strategy for George W. Bush's two presidential campaigns, said that by speaking from the Oval Office, Obama is communicating "that the oil spill is more important than any issue he's faced yet."

"When you consider the economic meltdown, escalation in Afghanistan and health care, that's saying a lot," McKinnon said.

As for why Obama's giving his first Oval Office address now, two months after the rig explosion, McKinnon said that "the timing may be just right" because "everyone's patience is exhausted."

The decision to speak from the Oval Office was a recent one. The Washington Post reported Friday that White House aides didn't expect him to address the spill from that venue. News broke over the weekend that the White House asked the broadcast networks for time Tuesday night to carry the speech.

Questions about the significance of Obama's first Oval Office address being devoted to the oil spill came up Monday aboard Air Force One en route to Gulfport, Miss. "What we're seeing in the Gulf is a catastrophe the likes of which our country has never seen before," said Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, "so the response has been enormous, the assets and the full power of the federal government has been brought to bear here, and so talking directly with the American people about what we're doing to address this crisis and what we're going to be doing moving forward is very important to the president right now."

Obama clearly hasn't been in a rush to use the historic setting.

Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian at Towson University outside Baltimore, tells Yahoo! News that his recent predecessors had already spoken from the Oval Office by this point in their presidencies.

After 16 months on the job, Ronald Reagan had given five Oval Office addresses, on topics ranging from economic recovery to instability in Poland to Christmas. George H.W. Bush had addressed the country on national drug control strategy and military action in Panama by this time in his tenure. Bill Clinton had given four Oval Office addresses. And George W. Bush had given one, after the attacks of 9/11.

Kumar noted that technological improvements made during the Clinton administration now allow presidents to broadcast more easily from various locations in the White House. During George W. Bush's first 16 months, the president made key addresses — which past chief executives might have been held in the Oval Office — from the Treaty Room (strikes against Al Qaeda) and Cross Hall (proposing a Department of Homeland Security).

Even though today's presidents have more options, Kumar said that selecting the Oval Office is "significant" and the public still sees it as an "important message coming from the president and that they should stop and listen."

"I think the reason to choose an Oval Office address now is because there are questions about his management style," she added. "And I think when you speak from the Oval Office, you speak as the chief executive, as a person who has command of implementation and command of the facts of what's going on."

Democratic consultant Bob Shrum doesn't agree that Obama needs an Oval Office address to show he's maintaining CEO-like control, citing polls showing the president's approval rating holding steady despite Beltway pundits firing at his management style.

Shrum said the Oval Office is a fitting venue to address the oil spill because of its historic use "at times of great national challenge, great national triumph and great national sorrow."

"At that level, it's a very powerful subliminal signal that he's talking to the whole country," Shrum said. "When you do that, the speech has to measure up."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2599;_ylt=AmFVMQQkxbAO3kmwM5QPisas0NUE;_yl u=X3oDMTNqcXRpZWxjBGFzc2V0A3luZXdzLzIwMTAwNjE1L3lu ZXdzX3BsMjU5OQRjY29kZQNtb3N0cG9wdWxhcgRjcG9zAzQEcG 9zAzEEcHQDaG9tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0 BHNsawNiZWhpbmR0aGV0aGU-

How about failure to regulate BP? Laws were in place that could have prevented this disaster. Our own government broke it's own laws and failed to enforce it's own regulations. The buck stops on Obama's desk.

---

More talk. When is he going to actually do something? Override the Jones Act and let foriegn ships help. They have been waiting for seven weeks to help out. Obama will not let them. He would rather have oil in the marshes so he can "kick" the oil companies. Like his green agenda has a chance of working without raising the price of oil until it is outragious.

---

The oil was on the way to the marshes, beaches and wildlife from day one. Shoulda gotten out of the way of the states on that one. Foreign oil-skimmer ships banned because of the OUT OF DATE Jones Act?? Jones act is to protect the railroads. Railroads are ZERO help in this situation.

Pop Quiz: Who said 'Information is a distraction' ??

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama walk in sand is prelude to primetime speech
By Erica Werner, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 3 mins ago

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Laying the groundwork for an evening speech to the nation, President Barack Obama walked a pristine stretch of sand on Florida's shoreline Tuesday and pledged to "fight back with everything we've got" against the spreading oil lurking offshore.

In a speech at Pensacola's Naval Air Station, Obama took note of the painful contrasts around him: "The sand is white. The water's blue," he said. And yet, he added, "those plumes of oil are off the coast."

Obama's challenge was spelled out clearly in a sign held up by one of the passersby who watched the president's motorcade whisk through this beach town: "Lead now!" it commanded.

That same sentiment was reflected in a new Associated Press-Gfk poll released Tuesday that found a majority of Americans disapprove of how Obama has handled the spill. Speaking to troops at the base, Obama said the country faced an unprecedented environmental disaster and "we're going to continue to meet it with an unprecedented response."

"We're going to fight back with everything that we've got," he said.

With that, the president wrapped up a two-day visit to the Gulf and headed back to Washington to outline his plans for the Gulf in a prime-time speech from the Oval Office. One measure of the enormity of the problem: The oil that has gushed into the gulf would fill the Oval Office nearly 600 times over, based on the government's best estimate of how much has been spilling daily.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said earlier Tuesday that Obama was poised to seize the handling of oil spill damage claims from BP, if necessary, to ensure that people get the help they need to recover.

The president began his day by inspecting Gulf waters from the unsullied white sands of Pensacola Beach with Gov. Charlie Crist and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen. Not far away, people were swimming in the glistening, emerald green water, and seagulls walked along the sands at the president's feet. But oil is nearby even if it can't be seen, according to Allen.

Onlookers chanted "Save our beach, save our beach."

Addressing the troops at Pensacola, Obama spoke of other daunting challenges facing the nation, telling them that "obviously, the news has been dominately lately by the oil spill but our nation is at war."

And he said the nation has the "strength and resilience" to face down all the different challenges it faces, a message sure to be echoed in his address to the nation.

Gibbs said the reason for wresting the claims-handling process from the British petroleum giant would be to make economically distressed individuals and businesses "whole."

Voicing increasing confidence in his ability to confront the nation's worst environmental crisis, Obama was set to outline a comprehensive response and recovery program, while assuring not only the people from the afflicted region, but all across America, that his administration will guide the country to a recovery.

On the matter of the disputed damage payments, Gibbs said, "We have to get an independent claims process. I think everyone agrees that we have to get BP out of the claims processes and, as I said, make sure that fishermen, hotel owners have a fast, efficient and transparent claims process so that they're getting their livelihoods replaced."

"This disaster has taken their ability to make a living away from them," he said. "We need to do this quickly, and we have to make sure that whatever money goes into that — that in no way caps what BP is responsible for. Whatever money they owe to anybody in the Gulf, they're going to have to pay regardless of the amount."

Obama's address to the nation sets the stage for his showdown White House meeting Wednesday with top BP executives. BP leased the rig that exploded April 20 and led to the leak of millions of gallons of coast-devastating crude. It's part of an effort by Obama, who's been accused of appearing somewhat detached as the oil spill disaster has unfolded, to convince a frightened Gulf Coast and a skeptical nation that he is in command.

The trip gave him ammunition for the speech and for his meeting with BP executives where he intends to finalize the details of a victims compensation fund. He visited vacant beaches in Mississippi where the threat of oil had scared off tourists, heard the stories of local employers losing business, watched hazmat-suited workers scrub down boom in a staging facility in Theodore, Ala., and took a ferry ride through Mobile Bay and then to Orange Beach, Ala., where oil has lapped on the shore.

"I am confident that we're going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before," Obama said Monday.

That pledge was reminiscent of George W. Bush's promise to rebuild the region "even better and stronger" than before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Bush could not make good on that promise, and Obama did not spell out how he would fulfill his. Tuesday's speech will give him the chance.

Presidents reserve the Oval Office for rare televised addresses. When they take their place behind the desk, it's a time for solemnity and straight talk — often a moment of history. There is a sense of gravity. One man by himself before one television camera speaking to the nation.

Oval Office addresses typically aren't lengthy discourses like a State of the Union, but if a president has to go for broke, this is where he does it. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. Ronald Reagan spoke there after the space shuttle Challenger explosion. John F. Kennedy grimly explained the Cuban missile crisis. Richard Nixon announced his resignation.

Obama hasn't used it yet. Not even during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Not to explain painfully high unemployment rates. Or bank and auto company bailouts. Not to speak of terrorism threats. Even when his health insurance plan was in peril, he did not speak from the Oval Office to rally support or explain to Americans why he considered it vital.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_obama/print;_ylt=Ag78n.5cIVBX.kned2hEONyp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


President Barack Obama walked a pristine stretch of sand on Florida's shoreline Tuesday and pledged to "fight back with everything we've got" against the spreading oil lurking offshore.

Why Florida ? Because there are no more "pristine beaches" in Louisiana and to walk the oil soaked beaches there would underscore his failure.


"We're going to fight back with everything that we've got," he said.

Two months late ..

[Jolie Rouge]

On oil trip, Obama eats shrimp, lauds Gulf beaches
Mon Jun 14, 2:44 pm ET

GULFPORT, Mississippi (AFP) – President Barack Obama Monday implored Americans to visit southern tourist beaches and munched on local seafood, seeking to boost two key industries threatened by the BP oil disaster.

"There's still a lot of opportunity for visitors to come down here. There are a lot of beaches that have not been affected and will not be affected," Obama said, at the start of a two-day trip to the region.

"We just want to make sure that people who have travel plans down to the Gulf area remain mindful of that.

"If people want to know what can they do to help folks down here, one of the best ways to help is to come down here and enjoy the outstanding hospitality."

Later, Obama lunched with Mississippi's Republican governor Haley Barbour and other officials, discussing the safety of local seafood while savoring mini crab cakes, fried shrimp and shrimp salad sandwiches at a local restaurant.

The lunch appeared to be an attempt to show Americans that seafood from parts of the Gulf coast not under a fisheries ban over the oil spill remained safe to eat.

The three states Obama is visiting on his two-day trip -- Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- have each seen their tourism industries overshadowed by the disaster, and are threatened by a massive oil slick spawned by a ruptured BP-operated undersea well.

Some Louisiana wetlands and beaches have already suffered from a thick soup of oil that has washed ashore, killing sea life and birds.

Any large-scale fall-off in tourism numbers would reap a heavy economic price in a region also suffering a devastating hit to its fishing and shrimping industry.

Obama was likely later to get a first hand look later Monday at Alabama's stunning white sands, which state officials fear could be blackened by oil, and are calling for an all-out effort to protect the state's coastline.

Near a staging facility which deploys equipment used in the disaster mitigation effort that Obama will visit later Monday, booms used to stop oil leaking into wetlands and inland waters could be seen in estuaries and inlets.

Obama spoke briefly to reporters after getting a briefing on the latest efforts to limit the scope of the oil disaster from local officials and the top US official dealing with the operation Admiral Thad Allen.

The oil has been spewing into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast sank two days after being crippled by an explosion on April 20.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100614/pl_afp/usoilpollutionenvironmentobamatourism;_ylt=ArjWsz7 U.d_Z1htdnht.4S8Gw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTE1dThlbzFlBHBvcwM zBHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmVsBHNsawNvbm9pbHRyaXBvYmE-

Where are all the commercials, with numbers to text to donate money, to help save the wetlands and the beaches? Do we even do that for our own people? Or is it just other countries?

--

How Fu(king wonderful - this dork shows up almost 2 MONTHS LATE and has a FU(KING PHOTO-OP munching shrimp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How could ANYONE with a rational sane mind support this EPIC FAILURE of a president!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! little "oil Dressing" with that shrimp, O'boy?


---


If a conservative doesn't like guns,
he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns,
he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian,
he doesn't eat meat..
If a liberal is a vegetarian,
he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative is homosexual,
he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual,
he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out,
he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host,
he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer,
he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention
of God and religion silenced.
(Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care,
he goes about shopping for it,
or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative reads this,
he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended".

[Jolie Rouge]

AP Poll: Majority disapprove of Obama on oil spill

Liz Sidoti And Trevor Tompson, Associated Press Writers – 6 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A majority of Americans disapprove of how President Barack Obama has handled the devastating Gulf oil spill though far more blame BP for what people call a sluggish two-month response, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday.

It comes as the president seeks to show more forceful leadership in confronting the nation's worst environmental crisis and convince a skeptical public he's up to the task.

The survey found that 52 percent don't approve of Obama's handling of the spill, a significant increase from last month when a significant chunk of Americans withheld judgment. But Obama's overall job performance rating didn't take a hit; it stayed virtually the same at 50 percent. That's consistent with the public's attitudes throughout his young presidency; people generally like him but don't necessarily agree with his policies.

The public is directing most of its ire at the oil company that leased the rig. A stunning 83 percent disapprove of BP's performance in the aftermath of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill of millions of gallons of crude. That number of Americans disapproving also was a big jump from May.

Back then, people seemed to take a more wait-and-see approach.

But public attitudes have shifted dramatically as Americans already reeling over a recession and angry at institutions of all types — from corporations to Congress — watched oil continue to gush while both BP and the government struggled to find a solution and clean up the mess.

Far more people are focused on the spill now as oil coats beaches, kills wildlife and cripples the Gulf economy; 87 percent now say the issue is extraordinarily important to them personally, second only to the economy. And far more rate the environment — 72 percent — as very important than did last month.

More than half reported strong feelings of anger over the speed of the government's response, and about a third said they felt a strong degree of shame about what's happening in the Gulf. Nearly a third expressed strong feelings of doubt over whether the government could really help them if they were a disaster victim and more than half doubted that the government's response to the oil spill, thus far, has had any impact.

All that underscores the public's widespread lack of faith in government as well as the task ahead for Obama as he tries to show he's in command of the response. The president was wrapping up a two-day visit to the region and planned an Oval Office prime-time speech on the catastrophe later Tuesday. Obama was meeting BP executives at the White House on Wednesday.

His response is all but certain to be a political issue, defining his presidency and, perhaps, affecting this fall's midterm congressional elections if not his likely re-election race in two years.

Nearly three quarters in the poll said they thought the spill will have some impact on their own families in the next year; 63 percent said the country would still be feeling the impact in five years while 40 percent said it would be more like a decade.

The AP-GfK Poll was conducted June 9-14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. It involved interviews on landline and cell phones with 1,044 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.

___

On the Net: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_ap_poll_obama_oil_spill_2;_ylt=AvV6WdJaCFpxJSeK GKz8GCcSq594;_ylu=X3oDMTE2bW42aDQ2BHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5 bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtYXBwb2xsOm1h





How the poll on oil spill/drilling was conducted
The Associated Press – 4 mins ago
The Associated Press-GfK Poll on President Barack Obama and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from June 9-14. It is based on landline and cell phone telephone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,044 adults. Interviews were conducted with 732 respondents on landline telephones and 312 on cellular phones.

Digits in the phone numbers dialed were generated randomly to reach households with unlisted and listed landline and cell phone numbers.

Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population's makeup by factors such as age, sex, education, and race. In addition, the weighting took into account patterns of phone use — landline only, cell only and both types — by region.

No more than one time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 4.3 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled.

There are other sources of potential error in polls, including the wording and order of questions.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_ap_poll_obama_oil_spill_method_1;_ylt=An_KwtNfR WPOtaQKY2Lnui4Gw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTE2MHBtaWdjBHBvcwMxB HNlYwN5bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtaG93dGhlcG9s

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama declares 'reckless' BP will pay Gulf cleanup
By Jennifer Loven, Ap White House Correspondent 55 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Vowing to "make BP pay," President Barack Obama accused the oil giant of "recklessness" in his first address to the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night, eight weeks to the day after the catastrophic oil spill began destroying waterways, wildlife and a prized Gulf Coast way of life.

"We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes," declared Obama, whose own presidency has been stumbling because of the gushing oil. A new Associated Press-GfK poll even indicates as many Americans disapprove of his handling of the crisis — 52 percent — as felt that way about President George W. Bush's handling of the Katrina aftermath.

Obama offered no immediate remedies for a frustrated nation. Rather he announced he had asked former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan — to be funded by BP PLC — in concert with local states, communities, fishermen, conservationists and residents "as soon as possible."

He did not detail what this effort — he called it a "battle plan" — should include or how much it might cost, a price sure to be in the billions of dollars. Whatever the bottom line, he declared to his prime-time television audience, "We will make BP pay."

That's not certain, however. In declaring that BP won't control the compensation fund for Gulf recovery, Obama failed to mention that the government won't control it, either. The president meets BP executives in a White House showdown on Wednesday.

Fifty-seven days into the crisis, oil continues to gush from the broken wellhead, millions of gallons a day, and Obama has been powerless to stem the leak. The sad episode has raised doubts about his leadership and his administration's response to what Obama has called the nation's worst environmental disaster.

He spoke from the Oval Office while seated at the storied Resolute desk, a bank of family photos and an American flag filling the backdrop. A president sometimes criticized as lacking emotion, Obama talked in a calm tone, no sign of the anger he showed earlier in the week concerning the spill.

In one specific action, Obama announced former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich as his choice for the new head of the agency that regulates the oil industry. Obama said Bromwich's job at the helm of the federal Minerals Management Service is to "the oil industry's watchdog, not its partner." He also said that coming regulatory reforms would require stricter drilling safety measures and more robust spill response plans.

With national frustration rising, Obama sought to defend his increasingly criticized efforts and to stoke new confidence that he can see the job through until the oil is gone and Gulf Coast lives are back to normal.

He pledged not to rest until BP had been held accountable for all the damage its exploded well has caused and until the Gulf Coast region is restored. He did not repeat his earlier pledges to see the Gulf returned to "better shape than it was before."

Likening that process to a long epidemic instead of a single crushing disaster like an earthquake or hurricane, he warned that the nation could be tied up with the oil and its aftermath for months "and even years."

There was more bad news, too.

A government panel of scientists determined that the well is leaking even more oil than previously thought, as much as 2.52 million gallons a day — or enough to fill the Oval Office where Obama sat more than 22 times. The total spilled so far could be as much as 116 million gallons.

Lightning even struck. A bolt hit the ship siphoning oil from the leak — injuring no one but halting containment efforts for five hours.

Back on land, as long as the oil keeps flowing, no one seems happy with what anyone is doing to deal with it, from Obama on down.

Said one spray-painted sign along the president's Florida motorcade route earlier in the day, as Obama capped a two-day inspection tour of the region: "Obama you are useless."

For restaurant owner Regina Shipp, her business suffering for lack of tourists in Orange Beach, Ala., the speech offered little solace.

"He said he's going to make BP pay. Can he? Can he?" said Shipp, standing amid a sea of empty tables at Shipp's Harbour Grill, which she owns with her husband, chef Matt Shipp.

And yet, Obama's overall approval rating has not yet dipped, remaining around the 50 percent mark. Further, the public still is far more eager to blame the company than the president, with the poll showing disapproval of BP up to 83 percent.

On Capitol Hill, dominating the day before the president looked into the cameras from behind the storied Resolute desk, executives of the largest oil companies were grilled for hours by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Lawmakers chastised chief executives representing ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — as well as BPAmerica — for being no better prepared for the worst than BP.

In sometimes-testy exchanges about the risks of seeking oil under a mile of water, the executives testified their companies would not have managed the Deepwater Horizon well in the same way, suggesting BP shortcuts led to the devastating outcome.

Looking ahead to his White House showdown Wednesday morning with BP executives, Obama said he would "inform" them that the company must set aside in an independently run fund whatever resources are required to make whole all local residents and businesses hurt by the spill and to repair the immense ecological damage wrought by the oil.

That meeting was to be followed by a presidential statement — his fourth planned remarks on the spill in three days. Later in the week, BP leaders take the Washington hot seat again, appearing before more congressional hearings.

BP has had only modest success so far in siphoning some oil from gushing into the water. But Obama said that within weeks "these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well." Later in the summer, he said, the company should finish drilling a relief well to stop the leak completely.

BP officials did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment on the president's specific criticisms. In a brief statement, the company only said it shares Obama's "goal of shutting off the well as quickly as possible, cleaning up the oil and mitigating the impact on the people and environment of the Gulf Coast."

However, Obama said that the new Gulf restoration plan would go beyond just repairing the effects of the crude on a unique, teeming ecology that was already battered by the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"We must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment," the president said.

Much of the president's speech was devoted to a recitation of steps his administration has already taken — "from the very beginning," he said.

Obama also spent a large chunk of his remarks on his goal of passing sweeping energy and climate change legislation, a key domestic priority of his presidency that had become a long shot.

But while Obama urged action, he was subtle about what he was calling on lawmakers and the public to rally behind. For instance, though Obama supports placing a price on heat-trapping carbon emissions, he did not directly state that.

"The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now," he said. "I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy - because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AnevR82fbsqz8Ln9iOPO0gyp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


"Containment"~what BRITISH PETROLEUM keeps trying to do, so that they can still make money from the gulf coast's misery and destruction~and Obama can still get his "pocket money"! "Cap"~what BRITISH PETROLEUM and our not~so~brilliant president SHOULD be worrying about and doing! but~oh, my! THEN BRITISH PETROLEUM would lose a well, lose money~and our Puppet President would lose money, too!

---

Ok, Washington and Obama, stop talking and do something. All this talk and no action. Or is it as I have always thought, our government is so corrupt, impotent, incapable, incompetent, and unwilling of doing to help this country or its people unless they make a political contribution to their campaign.


Obama signs bill to release money for Gulf cleanup
Tue Jun 15, 8:01 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill that makes more money available to the Coast Guard to pay for its response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new law removes the $100 million limit that the Coast Guard can spend on the BP spill from a government trust fund used to pay cleanup costs.

The Coast Guard could have run out of money to fight the spill if the spending cap was not lifted. Obama signed the bill Tuesday as he prepared to address the nation on the Gulf spill.

The Obama administration has said it will require BP PLC to pay for all cleanup expenses. Officials sent BP a $69 million bill earlier this month.

BP operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf on April 20.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_gulf_oil_spill_cleanup_fund/print;_ylt=AnevR82fbsqz8Ln9iOPO0gwGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

FACT CHECK: Obama inflates hopes in spill recovery
Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 9 mins ago

WASHINGTON – In assuring Americans on Tuesday that BP won't control the compensation fund for Gulf oil spill recovery, President Barack Obama failed to mention that the government won't control it, either.

That means it's anyone's guess whether the government can, in fact, make BP pay all costs related to the spill.

Obama aimed high in his prime-time Oval Office address — perhaps higher than the facts support and history teaches — as he vowed to restore livelihoods and nature from the still-unfolding calamity in the Gulf of Mexico.

A look at some of his statements and how they compare with those facts:

OBAMA: "We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused and we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy. ... Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."

THE FACTS: An independent arbiter is no more bound to the government's wishes than an oil company's. In that sense, there is no certainty BP will be forced to make the Gulf economy whole again or that taxpayers are completely off the hook for any of the myriad costs associated with the spill or cleanup. The government can certainly press for that, using legislative and legal tools. But there are no guarantees.

It took 20 years to sort through liability after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and in the end, punitive damages were slashed by the courts to about $500 million from $2.5 billion. Many people who had lost their livelihoods in the spill died without seeing a check.

___

OBAMA: "In the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well."

THE FACTS: BP and the administration contend that if all goes as planned, they should be able to contain nearly 90 percent of the worst-case oil flow. But that's a big "if." So far, little has gone as planned in the various remedies attempted to shut off or contain the flow. Possibly as many as 60,000 barrels a day are escaping. BP would need to nearly triple its recovery rate to reach the target.

___

OBAMA: Temporary measures will capture leaking oil "until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely."

THE FACTS: That's the hope, but experts say the relief well runs the same risks that caused the original well to blow out. It potentially could create a worse spill if engineers were to accidentally damage the existing well or tear a hole in the undersea oil reservoir.

___

OBAMA: "From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history."

THE FACTS: Early on, the government established a command center and put Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen in charge of coordinating the overall spill response. But officials also repeatedly have emphasized that BP was "responsible" and they have relied heavily on BP in making decisions from hiring cleanup workers to what oil dispersing chemicals to use. Local officials in the Gulf region have complained that often they don't know who's in charge — the government or BP.

___

OBAMA: "We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore."

THE FACTS: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials pleaded for weeks with the Army Corps of Engineers and the spill response command for permission to build about 40 miles of sand berms along the barrier islands.

State officials applied for an emergency permit to build the berms May 11, but as days went by Jindal became increasingly angry at federal inaction. The White House finally agreed to a portion of the berm plan on June 2. BP then agreed to pay for the project.

The corps was worried that in some cases such a move would alter tides and drive oil into new areas and produce more harm than good.

___

OBAMA: "Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue."

THE FACTS: Obama issued a six-month moratorium on new permits for deepwater drilling but production continues from existing deepwater wells.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_obama_fact_check;_ylt=AitRtnsPCkGnGWZ VclpSN5Ss0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTQxM2lmM2trBGFzc2V0A2FwLzI wMTAwNjE2L3VzX29pbF9zcGlsbF9vYmFtYV9mYWN0X2NoZWNrB GNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21 lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA2ZhY3Rja GVja29iYQ--

The only thing Obama has done is get mad at anyone who has said he isn't doing anything. I am amazed how the press still loves this guy. If Bush was president there would be 100's of stories a day how incompetent he was handling things and how he should be impeached for any number of transgressions.


Possibly as many as 60,000 barrels a day are escaping...


Scientists: Oil leaking up to 2.52M gallons daily
Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 15 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Scientists provided a new estimate for the amount of oil gushing from the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday that indicates it could be leaking up to 2.52 million gallons of crude a day.

A government panel of scientists said that the ruptured well is leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons of oil daily. The figures move the government's worst-case estimates more in line with what an independent team had previously thought was the maximum size of the spill.

"This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP's well," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

The latest numbers reflect an increase in the flow that scientists believe happened after undersea robots earlier this month cut off a kinked pipe near the sea floor that was believed to be restricting the flow of oil, just as a bend in a garden hose reduces water flow. BP officials has estimated that cutting the kinked pipe likely increased the flow by up 20 percent.

The pipe was removed so BP could install a containment cap that is trapping leaking oil and drawing it a ship waiting on the ocean surface.

The new numbers are based on a combination of scientific data, including an analysis of high-resolution video taken by underwater robots, pressure meters, sonar, and measurements of oil collected by the containment device on top of the well.

It is the fourth — and perhaps not last — time the federal government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons.

As of Tuesday, the maximum amount of oil that has gushed out of the well since the April 20 explosion is 116 million gallons, according to the estimates by scientists advising the federal government.

BP PLC now has a containment system in place in the Gulf of Mexico that has been capturing nearly 648,000 gallons of oil daily. That system was forced to shut down as a precaution Tuesday morning because of a fire on a ship connected to it. BP said the collection system was not damaged and about five hours after the fire, the containment operations resumed.

Under pressure from the federal government, BP plans to gradually expand its ability to capture the flow of oil until a relief well can permanently end the leak sometime in August. The collection system could expand to a peak capacity of 2.2 million gallons of oil by the end of June and up to roughly 3.4 million gallons of oil by mid July.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_flow;_ylt=AuNoPgDw5t4oaCOVhZ1FqP Ss0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNtZGFvNTJpBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNj E2L3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX2Zsb3cEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBv cHVsYXIEY3BvcwMyBHBvcwM2BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW 5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNzY2llbnRpc3Rzb2k-

[gmyers]

If its leaking 2.5 million gallons a day and not slowing down how in the world are they ever going to clean up this spill. I don't see any way possible.

[Jolie Rouge]

BINGO !!!! BP doesn't want to STOP it - they want to CONTROL it. Big difference. A devestating difference for our ecology AND our economy.

[Jolie Rouge]

Lawmakers' reaction to Obama speech
1 hr 39 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out a plan to "battle" BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as he sought to assure American he is in command of the crisis.

Obama also made an appeal for support of his effort to cut U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, saying now is the time for America to change the way it uses and produces energy.

Here is reaction from key U.S. lawmakers.

SENATORS JOHN KERRY, MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRAT AND JOE LIEBERMAN, CONNECTICUT INDEPENDENT, CO-AUTHORS OF COMPREHENSIVE ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION:

"This could be a historic leadership moment. President Obama used his first-ever Oval Office address to call for the passage of comprehensive energy and climate legislation. There can be no doubt that the President is rolling up his sleeves to ensure we establish a market mechanism to tackle carbon pollution, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs each year, strengthen energy independence and improve the quality of the air we breathe. We will continue working with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to pass comprehensive reform this summer."

SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER, CHAIRMAN OF THE SENATE REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE:

"The president should spend more time focusing on cleaning up and containing the oil spill and less time trying to pass a national energy tax that will drive jobs overseas looking for cheap energy."

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID (DEMOCRAT):

"President Obama presented a path to energy independence in his speech tonight that strengthens our economy and protects our environment. He made a compelling case that America cannot delay our pursuit of a national clean energy strategy that makes us more competitive globally."

HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (DEMOCRAT):

"Last June, the House passed a bill to create clean energy jobs here in America, protect consumers, reduce pollution and help free us from our dangerous dependence on dirty foreign fuels while ensuring our national security. Moving forward, we must complete this legislation and invest in a clean energy future founded on American innovation and the skill of our workers."

HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER JOHN BOEHNER:

"President Obama should not exploit this crisis to impose a job-killing national energy tax on struggling families and small businesses. Both parties should be working together to craft responsible solutions in response to this disaster. There's nothing responsible or reasonable about a national energy tax that will raise energy costs and destroy more American jobs."

SENATOR DAVID VITTER, LOUISIANA REPUBLICAN:

Vitter said the president was still falling short "when it comes to the military chain of command type" and the sense of urgency that Louisianans want to see from federal agency.

"I was also disappointed that the president did not address (lifting the offshore drilling) moratorium and my suggestion that we conduct rigorous immediate safety inspections in lieu of the blanket moratorium that is already starting to impact our reeling coastal economy. I have organized a meeting with Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tomorrow with other Gulf state members of Congress to push for inspections over the current moratorium."

SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU, LOUISIANA DEMOCRAT:

"I firmly believe that BP should establish an escrow account to compensate all individuals, businesses and communities in the Gulf Coast who have suffered damages because of this spill. But, it must be done in a way that ensures BP remains viable enough to pay every penny of what they owe to those who have been affected by this horrific spill and tragedy."

CONGRESSMAN DOC HASTINGS, SENIOR REPUBLICAN ON HOUSE NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE:

"There is an ongoing crisis in the Gulf and the priorities of the Administration should be simple: stop the leak and cleanup the oil. Such a devastating crisis shouldn't be used as leverage to push a cap-and-trade national energy tax that will send energy prices through the roof and send American jobs overseas."

SENATOR TOM CARPER, DELAWARE DEMOCRAT, CHAIRMAN OF SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON CLEAN AIR:

"I welcome the President's call for Congress to pass clean energy and clean air legislation this year. If there is any silver-lining that we can take from this devastating spill, I hope that it will be a wake-up call for America to get serious about pursuing clean, renewable sources of energy right here at home."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100616/ts_nm/us_oil_spill_obama_lawmakers_1;_ylt=AsgTlsSHAHywSy nYbMvx2oqp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDMTE2NjRvaXQ5BHBvcwMzBHNlYw N5bi1yLWItbGVmdARzbGsDZXYtZmFjdGJveDps

Making BP pay ?? my god BP has already said they are going to and have never shied away from it, Stop the oil first then deal with the fall out. I have no doubt that the bills on this will be years in the making, Now is not the time for him to tout an energy plan. Now is the time to commit resources into cleaning up the damage. Then he can work on his energy bill.

Stop the oil, clean up the mess, fix the economy ( it still stinks), Remember the defiect? then work on the energy plan, God get the priorities in line...

---

How does becoming energy independent and all the crap that I heard, address how to stop the leak and clean up the oil ?????????

---

There are Fuel Oil purifiers that every US warship has. They spin at 8000 rpm and
separate sediment from oil and the sediment sticks to the plates. They can
suck up all this oil into 50 and 75,000 gallon tanks and separate all the oil
from the water and actually still use the oil!!! We HAVE the technology. The
reason why its not being employed is because we have a lawyer for a president
instead of an engineer. It can be done. They're employing a technology right
now in Canada to remove oil from their sands... billions of gallons worth filtered
from the sand. i almost went to work in their refinery. ALL of this oil can be
saved. The Ocean can be Purified. The president just needs to talk to the right
people and make it happen. Set the right people to work and send BP the bill

[Jolie Rouge]

FACT CHECK: Obama left blanks in oil spill speech
By Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 16, 6:19 am ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_obama_fact_check;_ylt=A0wNdOfe5BhM1HI BIHKs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJxcGU0ZnBwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTA wNjE2L3VzX29pbF9zcGlsbF9vYmFtYV9mYWN0X2NoZWNrBHBvc wM2BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA2ZhY3RjaGVja29 iYQ--

WASHINGTON – In assuring Americans that BP won't control the compensation fund for Gulf oil spill recovery, President Barack Obama failed to mention that the government won't control it, either.

That means it's anyone's guess whether the government can, in fact, make BP pay all costs related to the spill.

Obama aimed high in his prime-time Oval Office address Tuesday night — perhaps higher than the facts support and history teaches — as he vowed to restore livelihoods and nature from the still-unfolding calamity in the Gulf of Mexico.

A look at some of his statements and how they compare with those facts:

OBAMA: "We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused and we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy. ... Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."

THE FACTS: An independent arbiter is no more bound to the government's wishes than an oil company's. In that sense, there is no certainty BP will be forced to make the Gulf economy whole again or that taxpayers are off the hook for the myriad costs associated with the spill or cleanup. The government can certainly press for that, using legislative and legal tools. But there are no guarantees and the past is not reassuring.

It took 20 years to sort through liability after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and in the end, punitive damages were slashed by the courts to about $500 million from $2.5 billion. Many people who had lost their livelihoods in the spill died without ever seeing a check.

___

OBAMA: "In the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well."

THE FACTS: BP and the administration contend that if all goes as planned, they should be able to contain nearly 90 percent of the worst-case oil flow. But that's a big "if." So far, little has gone as planned in the various remedies attempted to shut off or contain the flow. Possibly as much as 60,000 barrels a day is escaping. BP would need to nearly triple its recovery rate to reach the target.

___

OBAMA: Temporary measures will capture leaking oil "until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely."

THE FACTS: That's the hope, but experts say the relief well runs the same risks that caused the original well to blow out. It potentially could create a worse spill if engineers were to accidentally damage the existing well or tear a hole in the undersea oil reservoir.

___

OBAMA: "From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history."

THE FACTS: Early on, the government established a command center and put Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen in charge of coordinating the overall spill response. But officials also repeatedly have emphasized that BP was "responsible" and they have relied heavily on BP in making decisions from hiring cleanup workers to what oil dispersing chemicals to use. Local officials in the Gulf region have complained that often they don't know who's in charge — the government or BP.

___

OBAMA: "We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore."

THE FACTS: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials pleaded for weeks with the Army Corps of Engineers and the spill response command for permission to build about 40 miles of sand berms along the barrier islands.

State officials applied for an emergency permit to build the berms May 11, but as days went by Jindal became increasingly angry at federal inaction. The White House finally agreed to a portion of the berm plan on June 2. BP then agreed to pay for the project.

The corps was worried that in some cases such a move would alter tides and drive oil into new areas and produce more harm than good.

___

OBAMA: "Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue."

THE FACTS: Obama issued a six-month moratorium on new permits for deepwater drilling but production continues from existing deepwater wells.

[Jolie Rouge]

BP starts burning oil from leaking ruptured well
Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 23 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP began burning oil siphoned from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico early Wednesday as part of its plans to more than triple the amount of crude it can stop from reaching the sea, the company said.

BP PLC said oil and gas siphoned from the well first reached a semi-submersible drilling rig on the ocean surface around 1 a.m.

Once that gas reaches the rig, it will be mixed with compressed air, shot down a specialized boom made by Schlumberger Ltd. and ignited at sea. It's the first time this particular burner has been deployed in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials previously said they believed the burner system could incinerate anywhere from 210,000 gallons of oil to 420,000 gallons of oil daily once it's fully operational. The company did not say how much oil the new system has burned. It said work to optimize the new system was still ongoing.

Under pressure from the Coast Guard, the energy firm is attempting to expand its ability to trap leaking oil before it reaches the water. Already, oil and gas are being siphoned from a containment cap sitting over the well head and flowing to a drill ship sitting above it in the Gulf of Mexico.

Adding the burner is part of BP's plan to expand its containment system so it can capture as much as 2.2 million gallons of oil a day by late June, or nearly 90 percent of what a team of government scientists have estimated is the maximum flow out the well.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_containment;_ylt=AvLNgcsVtshXFdJ F3No.1q2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFoM25scGw2BHBvcwMyNQRzZWM DYWNjb3JkaW9uX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNicHN0YXJ0c2J1c m4-

[Jolie Rouge]

June 16, 2010
Obama's Oil Spill Speech

Obama launched Operation Blame BP from the Oval Office in an attempt to project command of the gulf leak debacle. I did not watch the speech myself. Here's the reason. Because my experience is, when you listen to a guy like a professional politician, he's gonna say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/us/politics/16obama-text.html

The NY Times editors are also a bit more interested in actions: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/opinion/16wed1.html


On Tuesday, in his first address from the Oval Office, he vowed to “fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes” and declared that “we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused.”

Mr. Obama and his team will have to follow through — with more energy and dedication than they have shown so far.

We know that the country is eager for reassurance. We’re not sure the American people got it from a speech that was short on specifics and devoid of self-criticism. Certainly, we hope that Mr. Obama was right when he predicted that in “coming weeks and days,” up to 90 percent of the oil leaking from the well will be captured and the well finally capped by this summer. But he was less than frank about his administration’s faltering efforts to manage this vast environmental and human disaster.

The speech was panned even by Obama's base at MSNBC: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/15/msnbc_trashes_obamas_address_compared_to_carter_i_ dont_sense_executive_command.html


Olbermann: "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days."

Hm, my presumption that Obama would say all the right things to me may not have been valid.

WOULD IT HAVE HELPED? With all the things that have gone wrong in the gulf, I was expecting Obama to ask Congress to repeal Murphy's Law.

I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING, BUT WE'RE MAKING GOOD TIME! Peter Wehner of Commentary highlights "one of the worst sections from an Oval Office address ever"; he includes Obama's refutation of skeptics who doubt that we landed a man on the moon, and this deathless passage: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/315131


"Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is our capacity to shape our destiny — our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how to get there. We know we’ll get there."

Tomorrow is later, but it is scheduled for arrival any day now.

IF DAN RIEHL IS WITH ME,WHO WILL STAND AGAINST ME? Via Glenn, we see this from Dan on the speech: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/06/ap-obamas-awesome-speech-and-what-we-arent-hearing.html


But given that the reviews are so overwhelmingly bad, it occurred to me - it's what we aren't hearing that's most significant. You can call Obama incompetent and no one is accusing you of racism, any more. Now, that's change!!

Ah hah! Just a few short days ago, I noted that Obama had lost the Rolling Stone and said this: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/06/if-youve-lost-the-rolling-stone.html


As a stray thought, we have spent months reading about the racist Tea Partiers, and for months it has seemed obvious that come the fall, desperate Dems would start screaming that everyone opposed to them was racist. That strategy would not be intended to change minds, but it might rally the base a bit. On the heels of the Gulf debacle (and the perceived civil liberties debacle http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0610/ACLU_chief_disgusted_with_Obama.html), the race card will be a lot harder to play.

Posted by Tom Maguire on June 16, 2010 | Permalink
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b2aa69e20134846f45c5970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Obama's Oil Spill Speech:
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2010/06/obamas-oil-spill-speech.html




waiting for the Obama-bots to come in and tell us what a fab-u-lous job the POTUS is doing ... :dancing: :dancing: :dancing:



See also http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2010/06/not-watching-the-oval-office-gulf-speech-see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-tweet-no-evil.html
NOT watching the Oval Office Gulf Speech: See no evil, hear no evil, tweet no evil?

[Jolie Rouge]

imagine if it had been Bush ....



[b]June 16, 2010
The President's Oil Reserves Lie
By Chad Stafko
Tuesday night, following a tour of the Gulf Coast area, the President of the United States addressed the nation regarding the state of the BP oil spill. In his speech from the Oval Office, President Obama spoke regarding our nation's dependence upon oil and how we need to break that dependence.


During his speech, the President made a statement that was blatantly false. The President noted, "We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserve. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean -- because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."


We are not running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. In fact, it is due to the President's party of extreme environmentalists that BP had to drill some 40 miles from the coastline in deep waters to extract oil. Imagine if this oil leak had happened in the shallow waters off of the East Coast or even, dare we say it, in the pristine ANWR region. How much easier it would have been to cap the leak and clean up the oil.


Consider our nation's vast oil reserve resources that are currently unavailable for use due to government ownership of the land or outright bans on drilling in certain areas.


According to a June 2008 article in Kiplinger Magazine, the United States has enough oil reserves to power the nation for upwards of three centuries. That's three-hundred years, Mr. President. We are not running out of oil reserves, it's just that those oil reserves have been declared off limits due to decades of environmental lobbying of our politicians, especially those on the Left. This lobbying has driven the likes of BP and others out deep into the Gulf of Mexico to extract the nation's needed oil.


Note the following statement from the article: http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/The_U.S._s_Untapped_Bounty_080630.html


"...untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Counties (OPEC) and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand-at today's levels-for auto, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil."


Think about that. The nations that currently hold us hostage by their massive oil production actually have far less reserves than our own nation. Put another way, some of the very nations in which we are dependent upon oil are also the same nations that help to sponsor worldwide terrorism. Were we to extract our own oil, it would make our nation and the world a safer place. But, isn't a spotted owl more important than the safety of the world?


Among the areas the article mentions are the oil shale located underneath land in Colorado, Wyoming, and in Utah. These lands are federally protected, but they alone could provide about 200 years worth of oil for the nation. Others mentioned include oil reserves located under Montana and some reserves located on protected lands in Texas, California, Utah, and Kentucky.


In fact, our own government has acknowledged the vast oil resources available to us. In an April 2008 study conducted by the United States Geological Survey, the group began its press release with the following, http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911 "North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation."


The report acknowledges that the available oil reserves could be much larger, but the 3.0 to 4.3 billion figure represents oil recoverable right now with today's technology. In fact, there may more than 100 billion barrels eventually recoverable with continued developments in the technology necessary to extract the oil.


Then there is the most famous government-blocked area of oil reserves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuges (ANWR). With 10 billion barrels available, ANWR is the most accessible of the major untapped oil reserve locations in the United States and claims are that this oil could be extracted in a way that would have minimal negative environmental impact.


Yet, with all of these resources, here we sit, importing oil at a feverish pace and a significant portion of it from our enemies and those who support terrorist organizations around the world. And, here we sit watching oil float towards our shores through unnecessary deep-water drilling when we could be drilling on dry land.


Yes, the President is correct when he calls for the need to use more alternative energy sources. Some of these may, in the long-term, actually be more efficient than the use of oil and be more readily accessible. However, until then we would be wise to tap our God-given resources in the safest of areas first before we go drilling more than a mile beneath the ocean for the same fuel that is available on dry land.


Therefore, if we're tossing all the blame towards BP for this catastrophic oil spill then we're ignoring other perpetrators. The reason BP and other oil companies are drilling 40+ miles off the shoreline and more than a mile deep is because of the stranglehold that environmentalists have held on politicians and their resulting energy policies for decades.


Let's use some common sense. Drill first on land, then in water. It's really not that difficult.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_presidents_oil_reserves_li.html

comments : http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/616940.html

[Jolie Rouge]

BP agrees to $20B fund; chairman apologizes
By Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer 32 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and BP reached agreement Wednesday on a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the giant British company's chairman apologized to America for the worst environmental accident in the nation's history.

BP is suspending its dividends to shareholders to help pay for the costs, said chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Obama announced the agreement after a four-hour meeting with BP officials. He also said the company had agreed to set up a separate $100 million fund to compensate oil rig workers laid off as a result of his six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

"The structure we are establishing today is an important step toward making the people of the Gulf Coast whole again, but it will not turn things around overnight," Obama said. He said the vulnerable fishermen, restaurant workers and other people of the Gulf "are uppermost in the minds of all concerned. That's who we're doing this work for."

Likewise, Svanberg, speaking for a company that has been assailed from every corner for the past two months, said, "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are — are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people."

The claims system sets up a formal process to be run by a specialist with a proven record. Instead of vague promises by BP, there will be a White House-blessed structure with substantial money and the pledge that more will be provided if needed. The news was applauded in the Gulf — a rare positive development in a terrible two-month period since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed a flood of oil that has yet to be stemmed.

Company officials talked separately outside the White House.

Svanberg announced the dividend suspension and expressed sorrow for victims of the spill. "This tragic accident ... should have never happened," he said, and he also used the occasion to "apologize to the American people."

Obama said the independent fund will be directed by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. There will be a three-member panel to adjudicate claims that are turned down.

"This is about accountability. At the end of the day, that's what every American wants and expects," Obama said.

BP would pay $5 billion a year over the next four years to set up the $20 billion fund.

"The people of the Gulf have my commitment that BP will meet its obligations to them," Obama said. "This $20 billion amount will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored."

He emphasized that the $20 billion was "not a cap" and that BP would pay more if necessary.

The eight-week disaster in the Gulf, with oil still pouring from the broken well, is jeopardizing the environment as well as the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people across the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

BP has taken the brunt of criticism about the oil spill because it was the operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig that sunk. It also is a majority owner of the undersea well that has been spewing oil since the explosion, which killed 11 workers.

But when the day of reckoning finally comes, BP may not be the only one having to pay up. That's because Swiss-based Transocean Ltd. owned a majority interest in the rig. Anadarko Petroleum, based in The Woodlands, Texas, has a 25 percent non-operating interest in the well.

Word of the fund was well received on the Gulf Coast. Applause broke out during a community meeting in Orange Beach, Ala., when Mayor Tony Kennon briefed participants on the White House meeting.

"We asked for that two weeks ago and they laughed at us," Kennon said. "Thank you, President Obama, for taking a bunch of rednecks' suggestion and making it happen." Obama visited Orange Beach on Monday.

In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also sought to take some credit. "While this fund will in no way limit BP's liability, it is a good first step toward compensating victims," he said. Reid and other Senate Democrats proposed a $20 billion BP-financed fund earlier in the week.

Feinberg, the official who will direct the effort, is currently known as Obama's "pay czar," setting salary limits for companies getting the most aid from a $700 billion government bailout fund. He also ran the $7 billion government compensation program after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was a job that lasted nearly three years as he decided how much families should get, largely based on how much income victims would have earned in a lifetime.

As pay czar, Feinberg has capped cash salaries at $500,000 this year for the vast majority of the top executives at the five major companies that received bailout funding: American International Group, GMAC Financial Services, Chrysler Financial, Chrysler and General Motors.

The president met at midday with the top BP leaders to press the London-based oil giant to pay giant claims.

Wednesday's White House meeting came the morning after Obama vowed in a TV address that "we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."

For the president, Wednesday's meeting with a few company officials behind closed doors was a bookend to his attempt to reach millions at once. Using a delivery in which even the harshest words were uttered in subdued tones, Obama did not offer much in the way of new ideas or details in his Tuesday night speech. He recapped the government's efforts, insisted once again that BP would be held to account and tried to tap the resilience of a nation in promising that "something better awaits."

Obama's forceful tone about BP's behavior shows how far matters have deteriorated. The White House once described BP as an essential partner in plugging the crude oil spewing from the broken well beneath nearly a mile of water. Now Obama says BP has threatened to destroy a coastal way of life.

An Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday showed 52 percent now disapprove of Obama's handling of the oil spill, up significantly from last month and about the same as President George W. Bush's rating after Hurricane Katrina. Most people — 56 percent — think the government's actions in response to the oil disaster really haven't had any impact on the situation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AlxNvZwJF2miQAaAMPJRHXSp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


Who administers this money ??



BP comment about 'small people' causes anger
7 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The BP chairman's comment that the oil giant cares about "the small people" received an icy reception on Wednesday from residents along the Gulf Coast. BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people."

Justin Taffinder of New Orleans was not amused. "We're not small people. We're human beings. They're no greater than us. We don't bow down to them. We don't pray to them," Taffinder said.

Svanberg is Swedish, and his comments may have been an unintentional slight. But coastal residents are angry over the oil spill disaster and at BP CEO Tony Hayward's comments that he "wants his life back."

Terry Hanners, who is retired from state and federal law enforcement and has a small construction company in Gulf Shores, Ala., said the "small people" remark revealed something about BP's frame of mind. "These BP people I've met are good folks. I've got a good rapport with them," said Hanners, 74. "But BP does not care about us. They are so far above us. We are the nickel-and-dime folks of this world."

Asked about the BP chairman's remark, BP spokesman Toby Odone told The Associated Press in an e-mail that "it is clear that what he means is that he cares about local businesses and local people. This was a slip in translation."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100616/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bp_small_people;_ylt=Au3QoQNTQ0A6BZ93N_fUIUGs0N UE;_ylu=X3oDMTFmNGl1a2cyBHBvcwMxMDAEc2VjA2FjY29yZG lvbl9idXNpbmVzcwRzbGsDYnBjb21tZW50YWJv

[Jolie Rouge]

WHAAATTT !?!?!

U.S. reconsiders Dutch offer to supply oil skimmers
June 12, 12:13 PM - John Ryden

The U.S. Government has apparently reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day.

One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. That is much greater than the high end estimate of the leak. The skimmers work best in calm water, which is the usual condition this time of year in the gulf.

These systems were developed by the Dutch as a safety system in case of oil spills from either wells or tankers. The Dutch have off shore oil development and also import oil in tankers. Their economy, just like ours, runs on oil. They understand that the production and use of oil has dangers and they wanted to be ready to cope with problems like spills. The Dutch system has been used successfully in Europe.

The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.

As of June 8th, BP reported that they have collected 64,650 barrels of oil in the Gulf. That is only a fraction of the amount of oil spilled from the well. That is less than one day’s rated capacity of the Dutch oil skimmers.

Turning down the Dutch skimmers just shows a total lack of leadership in the oil spill. To just leave the oil in the water because regulations do not allow you to pump slightly polluted oil back into the ocean is just plain stupid. The small amount of oil pumped back into the ocean with the Dutch system is tiny droplets of suspended oil that will be quickly broken down by naturally occurring bacteria.

Using the Dutch skimmers should have prevented most of the oil from ever getting even close to shore. The Dutch skimmers work best close to the source of the spill where the oil is more concentrated. Outside of that circle, dispersants could be used. Additional smaller skimmers could be used closer to shore to pick up patches that might get through the first 2 rings. The less oil that reaches shore, the less there is to clean up. The less oil that reaches shore, the faster the environment will restored by natural cleaning processes.

Having technology like the Dutch skimmers should also allow us to feel more comfortable about allowing deepwater drilling. If the skimmers work then it greatly lowers the environmental risks from future oil leaks in deep water. One advantage to deepwater wells is they are typically very far from shore, giving a long response time to clean up the problem. There would be no need to have a moratorium on deepwater drilling and having 50,000 people loose their jobs.

This incident with the skimmers just shows the lack of leadership by the President and other government officials. Most people, certainly the local residents, recognized that the government systems to deal with the oil spill were inadequate. It took over 6 weeks for the government to allow the state of Louisiana to build sand berms to protect the marshes, after oil has already entered the marshes. Decisions need to be made, often without full information and sometimes conflicting rules and regulations. The oil well did not stop spilling oil as the government tried to study the problems and make recommendations. There was no one with the authority to make the fast decisions necessary to combat the spill.

---

I really appreciate everyone's comments. Some of you have asked for references 'Source Documents' to the efforts of the Dutch to help us. Here are some with the first one being the most relevant:

Radio Netherlands Worldwide
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-oil-spill-response-team-standby-us-oil-disaster

Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0601/BP-oil-spill-Will-the-sweeping-arm-system-from-the-Dutch-help

Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012118082_oilforeign15.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Oil rig workers forced to job hunt after drill ban
Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jun 17, 8:36 am ET

MORGAN CITY, La. – Mr. Charlie has seen the up and downs over the years in the oil patch off Louisiana's coast, but this could be the toughest slump of all.

Earlier this week, the steel rig stationed on the Atchafalaya River graduated what could be one of its last classes of workers prepping for the rigors of offshore life. President Barack Obama's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf has sent shudders across the coast's offshore oil industry — where no one knows just how extensive or long-lasting the damage to jobs may be.

Louisiana has long been indebted to the oil industry. Its thousands of good-paying jobs — offshore workers frequently earn $50,000 a year or more — counterbalance the low-wage tourism industry in the state's southern tier of parishes. But that changed — at least temporarily — after the oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing the black gold into the waters. Now, many of those who counted on making it in the oil patch are out stumping for jobs.

Rodney Phillips, a 38-year-old heavy equipment operator from Angie, La., was in a nine-day class when the moratorium was declared. His father made a good living from 20 years of offshore work with Texaco. With the likelihood of quick offshore employment fading, Phillips was headed to the south Louisiana cities of Venice and Grand Isle in his Chevy truck in search of a job on one of the boats being hired to work the BP spill. "There's jobs doing everything down there right now: Crewboats, tug boats, heavy equipment. Whatever best offer I get is where I will start off," he said.

Virgil Allen, a safety specialist who manages Mr. Charlie, owned by the International Petroleum Museum and Exposition in Morgan City, said one more training class was scheduled this week. "The moratorium is stopping all the regular training," said Allen. The training rig, he said, is being turned into a clearinghouse for workers looking for oil spill response jobs, like the one Phillips hopes to get.

BP this week agreed to establish a $100 million fund to support oil rig workers idled by the six-month moratorium, separate from $20 billion it is setting aside for Gulf damages at the White House's insistence. No details have been released yet of how the rig worker money will be paid out. The administration also was to ask Congress for special unemployment insurance for the workers.

Still, almost no one is happy about the moratorium. "Bringing drilling to a screeching halt will deal another blow to Louisiana workers and businesses that are already reeling from the impact of the oil disaster," said U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La.

In the angst over drilling, perhaps no place in Louisiana will feel the economic ripple effects of the moratorium greater than Mr. Charlie, a landmark in the heart of Louisiana's offshore history. The brainchild of Marksville, La., marine engineer Alden J. "Doc" Laborde, Mr. Charlie was the first U.S. submersible rig to drill for oil. On its first outing for the Shell Oil Co. in 1954, the rig struck oil in a well near the South Pass of the Mississippi River, not far from the blown-out BP-operated well.

"Shell Oil's South Pass 27 discovery loudly announced the arrival of offshore Louisiana as a major new producing area," writes Tyler Priest in "The Offshore Imperative," a history of Shell's oil and gas exploration. Priest is a historian at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

Mr. Charlie — a steel platform stuck on a submersible barge — cut quite a figure by 1950s standards and was celebrated with galas and a Life magazine article that called it a "singularly monstrous contraption."

After its retirement in 1984, it was anchored at Morgan City, a sleepy oil town of 12,000 where the offshore industry got its start in 1947. In short order the Mr. Charlie was turned into a training center for divers, grips, cooks and riggers looking for work in the Gulf. It's been a great success. Until the Deepwater Horizon disaster, workers attracted by the offshore boom came from around the world for training.

Mr. Charlie has the feel of a well-worn, stately ship. "The workers have to live on offshore time: They sleep here, eat their meals here. It's all done just like they'll find it offshore," said Allen on the narrow staircase to the Mr. Charlie's modular living quarters.

The last group to go through was a boisterous group of about 20 unemployed or semi-employed workers taking part in a state Labor Department retraining program. Over a recent weekend, they sweated in the Louisiana sun as they got in and out of haz-mat suits and got drilled in basic rigging techniques, such as putting a pipe together. "I need to pay my bills," said Rodney Hebert, who said he was between jobs.

Despite the temporary downturn in Louisiana's oil industry, the Mr. Charlie will likely survive. When classes aren't in, it still stays open as a museum. And after all, no one really expects the oil patch to ever rock like it did in the 1950s when company towns and wealth poured into the backwaters of Louisiana. "The second largest helipad in the world was in Morgan City," Allen said. "The other was Di An, Vietnam."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_rig_workers;_ylt=AmKbD6bnVRftoBz NjikZD42s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTN1bGx0bjgwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzI wMTAwNjE3L3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX3JpZ193b3JrZXJzB GNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDMgRwb3MDMTAEcHQDaG9 tZV9jb2tlBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA29pbHJpZ3dvc mtlcg--


First off, these guys get paid like $50/hour and have no education. The industry is basically one big Cartel. I can agree with postponing drilling until we figure out exactly what the cause of this spill is, and put in REGULATIONS to make sure it doesn't happen again...THEN you can drill. It makes perfect sense to those with a sound mind.

I have to reply to this even if no one reads it.

1: they aren't paid quite that much..

2: they are hardly "uneducated" - Darwin takes care of stupidity on a rig pretty quick

3: we already know the cause of the spill - an unchecked regulator valve

4: the laws and regulations are already in place - BP got a pass on these in Aug 09 because they were an unneeded expense as this new type of rig wouldn't have these types of problems.

I am sure this poster has no knowledge of the oil industy beyond what is needed to pump gas in the car.

[Jolie Rouge]

Sea creatures flee oil spill, gather near shore
Jay Reeves, John Flesher And Tamara Lush, AP Writers – Thu Jun 17, 7:40 am ET

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water off Florida beaches, like forest animals fleeing a fire. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife seem to be fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast in a trend that some researchers see as a potentially troubling sign.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily be devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

The nearly two-month-old spill has created an environmental catastrophe unparalleled in U.S. history as tens of millions of gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Scientists are seeing some unusual things as they try to understand the effects on thousands of species of marine life.

Day by day, scientists in boats tally up dead birds, sea turtles and other animals, but the toll is surprisingly small given the size of the disaster. The latest figures show that 783 birds, 353 turtles and 41 mammals have died — numbers that pale in comparison to what happened after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989, when 250,000 birds and 2,800 otters are believed to have died.

Researchers say there are several reasons for the relatively small death toll: The vast nature of the spill means scientists are able to locate only a small fraction of the dead animals. Many will never be found after sinking to the bottom of the sea or being scavenged by other marine life. And large numbers of birds are meeting their deaths deep in the Louisiana marshes where they seek refuge from the onslaught of oil.

"That is their understanding of how to protect themselves," said Doug Zimmer, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For nearly four hours Monday, a three-person crew with Greenpeace cruised past delicate islands and mangrove-dotted inlets in Barataria Bay off southern Louisiana. They saw dolphins by the dozen frolicking in the oily sheen and oil-tinged pelicans feeding their young. But they spotted no dead animals.

"I think part of the reason why we're not seeing more yet is that the impacts of this crisis are really just beginning," Greenpeace marine biologist John Hocevar said.

The counting of dead wildlife in the Gulf is more than an academic exercise: The deaths will help determine how much BP pays in damages.

As for the fish, researchers are still trying to determine where exactly they are migrating to understand the full scope of the disaster, and no scientific consensus has emerged about the trend.

Mark Robson, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries Management with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said his agency has yet to find any scientific evidence that fish are being adversely affected off his state's waters. He noted that it is common for fish to flee major changes in their environment, however.

In some areas along the coast, researchers believe fish are swimming closer to shore because the water is cleaner and more abundant in oxygen. Farther out in the Gulf, researchers say, the spill is not only tainting the water with oil but also depleting oxygen levels.

A similar scenario occurs during "dead zone" periods — the time during summer months when oxygen becomes so depleted that fish race toward shore in large numbers. Sometimes, so many fish gather close to the shoreline off Mobile that locals rush to the beach with tubs and nets to reap the harvest.

But this latest shore migration could prove deadly.

First, more oil could eventually wash ashore and overwhelm the fish. They could also become trapped between the slick and the beach, leading to increased competition for oxygen in the water and causing them to die as they run out of air.

"Their ability to avoid it may be limited in the long term, especially if in near-shore refuges they're crowding in close to shore, and oil continues to come in. At some point they'll get trapped," said Crowder, expert in marine ecology and fisheries. "It could lead to die-offs."

The fish could also fall victim to predators such as sharks and seabirds. Already there have been increased shark sightings in shallow waters along the Gulf Coast.

The migration of fish away from the oil spill can be good news for some coastal residents.

Tom Sabo has been fishing off Panama City, Fla., for years, and he's never seen the fishing better or the water any clearer than it was last weekend 16 to 20 miles off the coast. His fishing spot was far enough east that it wasn't affected by the pollution or federal restrictions, and it's possible that his huge catch of red snapper, grouper, king mackerel and amberjack was a result of fish fleeing the spill.

In Alabama, locals are seeing large schools hanging around piers where fishing has been banned, leading them to believe the fish feel safer now that they are not being disturbed by fishermen.

"We pretty much just got tired of catching fish," Sabo said. "It was just inordinately easy, and these were strong fish, nothing that was affected by oil. It's not just me. I had to wait at the cleaning table to clean fish."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_marine_life;_ylt=Ah5_fwu38Au0u50 Mdop_5Zus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJxNzdpb2JqBGFzc2V0A2FwLzI wMTAwNjE3L3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX21hcmluZV9saWZlB HBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA3NlYWNyZWF 0dXJlcw--

[Jolie Rouge]

"It's a Disaster": Why the BP Spill Is WORSE for Obama Than a 'Katrina Moment'
Posted Jun 17, 2010 03:38pm EDT by Peter Gorenstein

A USA Today/Gallup Poll released Monday showed 71% of adults surveyed said Obama hasn’t been tough enough on BP. “I think he’s been grasping to look for something he can do to demonstrate he’s in charge,” says Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at Dartmouth's Tuck School and author of Why Smart Executives Fail and Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions.

Obama may have helped his cause by forcing BP to set aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil leak clean-up and claims. But Finkelstein believes the problems with Obama’s handling of the crisis started early. “They underestimated what was going on,” he says. “It's a disaster in a lot of different dimensions.”

On Sunday, it'll be two months since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and triggered the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The well is now gushing as much as 60,000 barrels of oil per day, 12 times more than first estimated. Even if the cap catches 15,000 barrels per day, more oil is spewing into the open water today than was thought before the cap was placed on the well. That’s not exactly making progress.

"Nothing is going well for Obama lately," Finkelstein says.

Obama's Katrina -- Or Something Worse?

As the days turn into weeks and months, the outrage grows -- against both BP and President Obama, with many pundits declaring this to be Obama’s 'Katrina moment.'

It might be worse, says Finkelstein: “I even heard the other day a comparison to Jimmy Carter and the [1979] Iran Hostage crisis,” which derailed Carter's hopes for reelection. The White House must be hoping it won’t be as damaging to Obama's political future.

The backlash against the President is exacerbated by the high expectations generated during the 2008 election and at the start of his presidency, Finkelstein says.

But no matter what Obama says, the reality is the government and the public must rely on BP to stop the leak. “You have to symbolize you’re in charge, you have to have people believe your in charge but the reality is you can’t fix it yourself,” Finkelstein says.

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/its-a-disaster-why-the-bp-spill-is-worse-for-obama-than-a-katrina-moment-yftt_505500.html

comments

Rolling Stone recently release a lengthy article about this most recent disaster and the role that the Obama administration played in allowing this event to occur. The drilling of this well was authorized by the Obama administration, not Bush. Who would have thought that government regulators at MMS would allow this to happen after having coke parties, orgies, and ski vacations with BP officials. And Obama ran on this issue. Vote for him again, dummycrats.

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They've put 20 billion aside for compensation? Well, like I said before, "Compensation is useful only after the damage is done," sorry, but the damage is growing. How about coming with some plan to stop it, then compensate. unless this administration is wearing its shoes on their heads. Three words STOP THE LEAKAGE.

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Cap and trade baby!!!! Smells a little fishy......oily fishy. What not just remove the flange and bolt a cap plate over it?

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This leak is a result of poor risk management. Neither BP or the government had a backup plan in case the blowout value failed. Once this blowup occurred, the government should have addressed the issue and stoped the leak and mitigated the environmental damage. Instead it looked to place blame and use this incident to further its agenda. This is not leadership.

[Jolie Rouge]

BP chief says he wasn't in loop, enraging Congress
By Calvin Woodward And Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press Writers 37 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Channeling the nation's anger, lawmakers pilloried BP's boss in a withering day of judgment Thursday for the oil company at the center of the Gulf calamity. Unflinching, BP chief executive Tony Hayward said he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and coolly asserted, "I'm not stonewalling."

That infuriated members of Congress even more, Democrats and Republicans alike.

Testifying as oil still surged into the Gulf of Mexico and coated ever more coastal land and marshes, Hayward declared "I am so devastated with this accident," "deeply sorry" and "so distraught."

Yet the oil man disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion, telling a congressional hearing he had only heard about the well earlier in April, the month of the accident, when the BP drilling team told him it had found oil.

"With respect, sir, we drill hundreds of wells a year around the world," Hayward told Republican Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas.

"Yes, I know," Burgess shot back. "That's what scaring me right now."

Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., told the CEO: "I think you're copping out. You're the captain of the ship." Democrats were similarly, if more predictably, livid.

"BP blew it," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. "You cut corners to save money and time."

The verbal onslaught had been anticipated for days and unfolded at a nearly relentless pace. Hayward had one seemingly sympathetic listener, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who apologized for the pressure President Barack Obama had put on BP to create a compensation fund. Hours later, after criticism from Republicans and Democrats as well as the White House, Barton backed off and apologized for his apology.

With multiple investigations continuing and primary efforts in the Gulf focused on stopping the leak, there was little chance the nation would learn much from Hayward's appearance about what caused the disaster. Yet even modest expectations were not met as the CEO told lawmakers at every turn that he was not tuned in to operations at the well.

He said his underlings made the decisions and federal regulators were responsible for vetting them.

Hayward spoke slowly and calmly in his clipped British accent as he sought to deflect accusations — based on internal BP documents obtained by congressional investigators — that BP chose a particular well design that was riskier but cheaper by at least $7 million.

"I wasn't involved in any of that decision-making," he said.

Were bad decisions made about the cement?

"I wasn't part of the decision-making process," he said. "I'm not a cement engineer, I'm afraid."

Also, "I am not a drilling engineer" and "I'm not an oceanographic scientist."

What about those reports that BP had been experiencing a variety of problems and delays at the well?

"I had no prior knowledge."

At one point a frustrated Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, interrupted the CEO. "You're kicking the can down the road and acting as if you had nothing to do with this company and nothing to do with the decisions. I find that irresponsible."

Hayward quietly insisted: "I'm not stonewalling. I simply was not involved in the decision-making process."

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., voiced the committee's frustrations as the afternoon wore on. "You're really insulting our intelligence," he said. "I am thoroughly disgusted."

Waxman told the BP executive that in his committee's review of 30,000 items, there was "not a single e-mail or document that you paid even the slightest attention to the dangers at this well."

Burgess slammed both the CEO and the government regulators for a risky drilling plan that he said never should have been brought forward.

"Shame on you, Mr. Hayward, for submitting it," Burgess said, "but shame on us for accepting it, which is simply a rubber stamp."

In a jarring departure that caught fellow Republicans by surprise, Barton, the top GOP member of the panel, used his opening statement to apologize — twice — for the pressure put on the company by President Barack Obama to contribute to a compensation fund for people in the afflicted Gulf of Mexico states.

Barton said the U.S. has "a due process system" to assess such damages, and he decried the $20 billion fund that BP agreed to Wednesday at the White House as a "shakedown" and "slush fund." He told Hayward, "I'm not speaking for anybody else. But I apologize."

He later retracted his apologies to BP, then apologized anew — this time for calling the fund a "shakedown." "BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident," he said, and "fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident."

Barton's earlier remarks were clearly an embarrassment for the party. House Republican leaders John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence issued a statement asserting: "Congressman Barton's statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose."

Since 1990, oil and gas industry political action committees and employees have given more than $1.4 million to Barton's campaigns, the most of any House member during that period, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

As Hayward began to testify, a protester disrupted the hearing and was forcibly removed from the room by Capitol police. The woman was identified as Diane Wilson, 61, a shrimper from Seadrift, Texas, near the Gulf Coast. Her hands stained black, she shouted to Hayward from the back of the room: "You need to be charged with a crime."

Stupak, the subcommittee chairman and a former Michigan state trooper, noted that over the past five years, 26 people have died and 700 have been injured in BP accidents — including the Gulf spill, a pipeline spill in Alaska and a refinery explosion in Texas.

Hayward argued that safety had always been his top priority and "that is why I am so devastated with this accident." When he became CEO in 2007, Hayward said he would focus "like a laser" on safety, a phrase he repeated on Thursday.

Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., questioned BP's commitment to safety.

BP had 760 safety violations in the past five years and paid $373 million in fines, Sullivan said. By contrast, Sunoco and ConocoPhillips each had eight safety violations and ExxonMobil just one, Sullivan said.

"How in the heck do you explain that?" he asked Hayward. Hayward said most of those violations predated his tenure as CEO. "We have made major changes in the company over the last three to four years," he said.

An estimated 73.5 million to 126 million gallons of oil has come out of the breached wellhead, whether into the water or captured.

The reservoir that feeds the well still holds about 2 billion gallons of oil, according to the first public estimate Hayward has given of the size of the undersea oil field.

That means the reservoir is believed to still hold 94 percent to 97 percent of its oil. At the current flow rate, it would take from two years to nearly four years for all the oil to be drained from it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AlMglf444PRQQEmj5h5y1tKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

For BP, a $20 billion drop in a very large bucket
By Bernard Condon And Michael Liedtke, Ap Business Writers Thu Jun 17, 5:54 pm ET

NEW YORK – BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined.

So when the White House arm-twisted its executives into setting aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil spill, investors weren't worried it would bankrupt BP. They barely batted an eye.

"The U.S. government will become insolvent before BP does," said Bruce Lanni, a stock analyst with Nollenberg Capital Partners.

Sure, BP stock has crumpled in half in a matter of weeks. Creditors are demanding ever higher interest. But this time it's not some inscrutable, high-flying Wall Street bank in trouble.

BP posted $17 billion in profit from its vast operations around the globe last year, compared with $5.7 billion for Apple and $6.5 billion for Google. More important, in the past three years the company generated $91 billion in cash flow from operations.

It's not highly leveraged with debt, as banks were during the financial crisis. And it has 18 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves, twice what the U.S. consumes every year.

BP has spent about $1.8 billion on the spill so far, but that's the first drop in a very large bucket. If BP faces criminal charges, for instance, it could end up having to pay tens of billions in legal costs alone.

Analyst estimates of BP's total cost range from $17 billion to $60 billion. If the worst predictions about the leak come true, that figure could surpass $100 billion, based on a Goldman Sachs estimate that each barrel of oil spilled could wind up costing as much as $40,000 in cleanup and compensation.

Such a big bill, even at the lower end of the estimates, would drive many companies under. But analysts said BP probably won't have to go to that extreme unless it wants to wall off liabilities from the rest of its operations to attract potential suitors.

Under Wednesday's deal with the Obama administration, BP will suspend its dividend for the rest of 2010, freeing up $8 billion. The company also plans to raise $10 billion from selling some assets. Add cash lying around in bank accounts and in short-term investments and BP could raise $25 billion without breaking much of a sweat.

What's more, BP is expected to generate $30 billion this year in operating cash flow, assuming oil prices don't fall. Investors like to focus on this figure because, unlike profits, it ignores costs for which money never changes hands, like wear and tear on rigs.

Much of this operating cash has to be plowed back into the company, but some of that spending — $21 billion last year — is discretionary and could be cut. On Wednesday BP said it will trim planned outlays this year by $2 billion.

BP also has relatively little debt for a company of its size. That means it has plenty of wiggle room to borrow. In fact, it already has lined up $10 billion with banks if it needs it.

The caveat: If BP did need to issue bonds or take out a loan, it would have to pay above-market interest rates because the risks posed by the oil spill have tainted its credit rating.

Fear of the unknown has taken a toll on BP's stock.

With BP's deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico still spewing oil two months after it exploded, trying to guess how much the company will have to cough up for cleanup and damages seems a fool's game.

And after watching other seemingly impregnable companies collapse over the past two years, investors are not in the mood for much uncertainty.

"We are living in an era where there is no such thing as too big to fail," said Stephen Leeb, president of the money manager Leeb Group. That specter, he said, makes BP "very scary" to investors.

BP's agreement to the $20 billion fund — and President Barack Obama's pledge that the company is strong and should remain so — seemed to calm investors a bit. But they still fret about BP's total tab.

Fresh estimates warn that as much as 2.5 million gallons of oil a day have been leaking into the Gulf — triple what scientists thought just a week ago. Worried that BP is more likely now to stiff its lenders, Fitch Ratings recently knocked BP's credit score down six notches to triple B.

BP's stock price has plunged 46 percent since the April 20 explosion, wiping out $87 billion in shareholder wealth. It's more than most pessimistic stock analysts expect the company will have to pay.

And that's got some of them quite animated.

"It's overdone," said Philip Adams of Gimme Credit. Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co. captures BP's stock performance in one word: "Ridiculous."

Gheit predicts BP shares will hit $55 by the end of the next year, up nearly 75 percent from where it was trading Wednesday. Before the explosion, BP's stock was at about $60, valuing the company at $187 billion.

But despite BP's enormous wealth, even bulls worry its stock might fall further.

Among their concerns:

• A sharp drop in oil prices.

Oil falling from $75 per barrel to $60 or $55 "would be far more destabilizing to the company than any potential claim it might face in the Gulf," Oppenheimer's Gheit said. BP's annual cash flow fluctuates by $450 million for every $1 change in oil, he estimated.

If oil prices fell, BP would be more likely to explore selling itself to Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell or Chevron or at least divest its U.S. operations, analysts said.

• Washington could restrict BP in the U.S.

BP's willingness to set up a compensation fund seems to have converted Obama into more of an ally than an antagonist. On Wednesday, the president called the company "strong and viable," adding that it was "in all our interests that it remain so."

But there's still a risk that political backlash could restrict BP's operations in the U.S. and reduce its government contracts.

Though it operates in more than 80 countries, BP is heavily dependent on the U.S. Forty percent of its assets are in the country, and the company is the biggest energy provider to the U.S. military.

"If the government has a single-minded focus to be punitive, it could take this company down," said Lawrence Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.

Alex Morris of Raymond James said he expected politicians to be careful meting out punishment because the dependency is mutual, given the country's oil addiction.

"We're not going to ban them from the Gulf," he said, noting that BP is the biggest producer there. "It's hard to imagine our politicians telling them to pack their bags."

• Hurricane trouble.

If BP doesn't plug the leak soon, it runs the risk that a big storm during hurricane season will wash more oil ashore and add to damages, said Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss.

For bulls on BP stock, the company's greatest asset may be time.

Cases involving major companies tend to drag on for years in the labyrinth of the U.S. legal system, and the complexity and stakes involved in the Gulf spill probably will lengthen the process even more. With more time to pay, BP can stagger its costs instead of absorbing them all in a single financial blow.

"I would be stunned if all the criminal and civil cases against BP are wrapped up before the end of this decade," said David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University's School of Law in Rhode Island.

BP may be able to stretch out payments even longer, if the Exxon Valdez spill is any measure. The tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989, but it took nearly two decades for the courts to determine what the company had to pay.

Said Raymond James analyst Morris, "Anytime you have lawyers billable by the hour, you know it's going to drag out."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100617/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bp_s_future/print;_ylt=AoTPtMPWJmju6Y8I3Sy2b8Rv24cA;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP's Hayward is relieved of managerial duties
2 hrs 56 mins ago

A day after he was grilled by Congress, BP chief executive Tony Hayward is being demoted. According to Britain's Sky News, BP Managing Director Bob Dudley will take over day-to-day oversight of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill while BP's chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg (he of the "small people" comment) will assume major PR duties. (Yes, you read that right — the BP executive who famously expressed his compassion for "the small people" will be tasked with enhancing the company's public image.)

The main reason for the shift is plain enough for anyone who's been following the spill: BP executives acknowledge that as the company's face during the crisis, Hayward has blown it. Svanberg, while defending the BP CEO, acknowledged that Hayward's comments have not been helpful to the company's efforts to control fallout from the disaster.

"It is clear Tony has made remarks that have upset people," Svanberg tells Sky News. "This has now turned into a reputation matter, financial and political, and that is why you will now see more of me."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_bs2709/print;_ylt=AoTPtMPWJmju6Y8I3Sy2b8Qbq594


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Embattled BP CEO removed from spill oversight
By Ray Henry, Associated Press Writers 1 min ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP removed Chief Executive Tony Hayward from day-to-day oversight of the Gulf oil spill crisis a day after he was pummeled by lawmakers in an appearance on Capitol Hill, the company's chairman said Friday.

Carl-Henric Svanberg told Britain's Sky News television that Hayward "is now handing over the operations, the daily operations to (BP Managing Director) Bob Dudley," overshadowing news that after many setbacks BP was finally making real progress in siponing and burning off oil from the underwater gusher.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen announced earlier Friday that a newly expanded containment system is capturing or incinerating more than 1 million gallons of oil daily, the first time it has approached its peak capacity. And the system will soon grow. By late June, the oil giant hopes it can keep nearly 90 percent of the flow from hitting the ocean.

Allen also said the Coast Guard is ramping up efforts to capture the crude closer to shore with the help of private boats. As of Friday morning, between 65 million and 121.6 million gallons of oil have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, based on federal daily flow rate estimates.

The optimistic news about the containment plan was tempered by Hayward's removal, which follows a June 4 announcement by BP that Dudley, and American oil executive, would lead the long-term response to the oil spill once the leak had been stopped. Svanberg's statement appeared to accelerate that timeline, as millions of gallons of crude continue to gush into the Gulf.

A BP spokesman in Houston, Tristan Vanhegan, says the "board still has confidence in Tony."

The company also continues to struggle to compensate Gulf Coast residents and business owners who have been economically devastated by the spill. On Friday, the House Judiciary Committee said data it has collected shows that BP has paid less than 12 percent of the claims submitted.

The committee said in a statement that data it collected showed only $71 million out of an estimated $600 million had been paid as of Tuesday. In addition, the panel said that BP didn't make any payments in the first two weeks following the April 20 explosion and oil spill, and that it hasn't made a single payment for bodily injury or diminished home property value.

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers said he's concerned that BP "is stiffing too many victims and shortchanging others."

The chief of the new independent office to pay claims said a plan to handle the remaining damage claims will be in place in 30 to 45 days. Kenneth Feinberg, who's overseeing the Independent Claims Facility, said he also hopes to have a program going forward that would provide payment within 30 to 60 days of someone submitting a new claim.

"The challenge here is going to be to evaluate quickly, eligible claims, legitimate claims and get them paid," said Feinberg, who was chosen by President Barack Obama and BP for the role.

Feinberg, who was in Mississippi Friday to meet with Gov. Haley Barbour, reiterated that his office isn't a government program. The lawyer, who oversaw payouts to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he will be paid by BP but didn't say how much.

Connie Bartenbach, owner of Rental Resources in Ocean Springs, Miss., said Friday that she's been unable to get her claims processed with BP. Her cancellation rates last month were six times higher than normal, and business is getting worse.

"They have somehow lost me in their system. I filed with them on May 18," she said. "I should have gotten a call back long before now."

Earlier in the day, the Coast Guard signaled a shift in strategy to fight the oil, saying it was ramping up efforts to capture the crude closer to shore.

The Coast Guard's Allen said an estimated 2,000 private boats in the so-called "vessels of opportunity" program will be more closely linked through a tighter command and control structure to direct them to locations less than 50 miles offshore to skim the oil. Allen, the point man for the federal response to the spill, previously had said surface containment efforts would be concentrated much farther offshore.

The news of Hayward's removal came a day after he told Congress members that he was "so devastated with this accident," "deeply sorry" and "so distraught."

But he also testified that he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion. BP was leasing the rig the Deepwater Horizon that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the environmental disaster. "BP blew it," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. "You cut corners to save money and time."

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf residents angry about BP and claims process
06/09/10

BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed any notion that the claims process is slow or that the company is dragging its feet. Proegler said BP has cut the time to process claims and issue a check from 45 days to as little as 48 hours, provided the necessary documentation has been supplied. BP officials acknowledged that while no claims have been denied, thousands and thousands of claims had not been paid by late last week because the company required more documentation.



WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and BP reached agreement Wednesday on a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the giant British company's chairman apologized to America for the worst environmental accident in the nation's history.

Committee: BP has paid less than 12% of claims
1 hr 31 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee says data it has collected shows that BP has paid less than 12 percent of claims submitted by people and businesses arising from the Gulf oil spill.

The committee said in a statement Friday that only $71 million out of an estimated $600 million had been paid as of Tuesday. In addition, the panel said that BP didn't make any payments in the first two weeks following the explosion and oil spill.

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers said he's concerned that BP "is stiffing too many victims and shortchanging others."

The committee said BP hasn't made a single payment for bodily injury or diminished home property value. BP officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_go_co/us_gulf_oil_spill_slow_payments/print;_ylt=AoTPtMPWJmju6Y8I3Sy2b8SMwfIE;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Effort to Clean Up Gulf Spill Seriously Thwarted by Safety Patrol
By Doug Powers • June 17, 2010 09:23 PM **Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers


This is unbelievable, in a governmentally believable kind of way. We have a serious emergency in the Gulf requiring the help of every available resource, and yet the government entities in charge just can’t put down their rules, regs & safety manuals as if they’re on harbor patrol during spring break:


Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state’s oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor’s wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.

Louisiana Governor Jindal frustrated over decision-making red tape. “It’s the most frustrating thing,” the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. “Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges.”

Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk. “These barges work. You’ve seen them work. You’ve seen them suck oil out of the water,” said Jindal.


Why were the oil-sucking barges that were having a positive effect idled? Because… oh, just read it and weep:


But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.



What? No checking to make sure the barge workers were applying the proper SPF sunscreen and wearing hardhats? Plus, the barges might be smuggling in some Dutch skimmers that haven’t yet received EPA approval — you can’t be too careful when you’re dealing with a disaster where every minute counts!

The frustrating thing about almost any government response to an emergency is that it’s hard to tell if their incompetence is deliberate or intentional — they’re so good at both.


---

Like I have been saying for weeks. The feds do not want this mess cleaned up. They are doing everything they can to slow down any and every step in the process of plugging the leak, minimizing the damage and cleaning up the mess.

But they can shake down BP for a cool $20 billion in no time at all.

And Boehner’s response to Barton’s comments yesterday make me realize the GOP is still a bunch of morons who aren’t going to make a bit of difference if they should regain control of the House or Senate in 2010. I don’t expect them to do a damn thing about Obama-care, cap and tax, or any other Marxist act enacted during the past two years. The GOP “leadership” is part of the problem. True, they are not as MASSIVE a problem as the Dim-o-crats, but they are clearly intent on selling out the nation.

--

Apparently in Okaloosa County, the Coast Guard has been overrunning booms that the County has placed without CG approval.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/15/floridas-okaloosa-county-goes-rogue-on-oil-spill-as-jindal-orders-national-guard-to-build-protections-off-louisiana/

http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/18/coast-guard-defends-grounding-oil-sucking-barges-in-gulf/

http://hindenblog1.blogspot.com/2010/06/crash-stuck-on-stupid-government.html

My effort thus far today.

BIG GOVERNMENT mandates disaster.

It will follow as night follows day.

---

$7-a-gallon gas?
The folly of O’s oil-spill ‘fix’

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK#ixzz0rDvf9J9i

BO did tell us we can not drive our SUVs without permission now didn’t he? Millions of barrels of that oil could have been recovered w/o Bambi’s interference.

If the price does jump a lot the first week in November would be a good time.

[Jolie Rouge]

British press starts to turn on Hayward, with plenty of anti-Obama rage thrown in for good measure
18 mins ago


Many in the British press have slammed the U.S. government lately for demonizing BP, instead of simply holding the company accountable for the Gulf oil spill.

After newly-demoted BP chief executive Tony Hayward appeared before Congress Thursday, there more heated reaction from political writers and commentators across the pond. But given Hayward's inability (or unwillingness) to answer a number of questions, the anti-Obama tabloid rage that's been a fixture in the British press was mixed with a good amount of criticism directed at Hayward.

The Times (of London) didn't go easy on the oil executive, summing up its analysis of his performance in Washington with the headline: "From Mr. Bean to Mr. Has-been for BP's Tony Hayward."

The Times' Giles Whittell wrote that Hayward "had a chance to save his career and the good name of his company by giving forthright, detailed answers to highly specific questions submitted in advance by two of the most astute and enlightened men in Congress." Instead, Hayward, he wrote, "seemed to have prepared by taking beta blockers."

Whittell argued that Hayward stonewalled Congressional interrogators, despite the executive's claims to the contrary. The Guardian clearly agreed with that assessment in its own piece on the hearing: "BP oil spill: Tony Hayward stonewalls Congress."

Although Hayward was "carefully coached by legal and media teams and was testifying under oath," the Guardian noted, he "failed to satisfy." Also, according to the Guardian, Hayward delivered his answers "in flat, impassive tones."

In the Telegraph, brand agency executive Mark Borkowski wrote that "Hayward's communication skills didn't rival those of a tax inspector."

"The new age demands a front-and-centre spokesmen who can make the audience feel like he is listening and actually gives a damn," Borkowski wrote. "But Tony Hayward doesn't seem to have learned a great deal about being inclusive, about engaging with the public."

"Accused of stonewalling, he stonewalled," Borkowski continued. "He couldn't, or wouldn't, answer most of the questions. In fact, he looked like a tired undertaker who was rather bored with having to look mournful."

Still, other British commentators still had plenty of rancor left for the United States and its political leaders. Rupert Cornwell, a columnist for The Independent, added to the criticism that others in the British press have leveled against the Obama administration and Congress—that they're unfairly piling on BP even as the company tries to clean up its mess. Cornwell wrote that "yesterday's grilling of Mr. Hayward...is a 21st-century version of the medieval stocks, public disgrace for the public villain of the moment."

While Cornwell harkened back to medieval times to describe Hayward's treatment on Capitol Hill, The Daily Mail went back even further for a historical comparison. The British paper reported that Hayward was "subjected to a grilling so savage yesterday it was more like ancient Rome than Capitol Hill."

"Wave after wave of criticism flew the way of the hapless boss and his company," the Daily Mail continued, "confirming them both as Public Enemy No. 1 in the U.S."

The Economist, more highbrow than the typical Fleet Street tabloid, came out swinging at the Obama administration in the issue on newsstands Friday. However, The Economist's ire isn't motivated by jingoism or knee-jerk America-bashing—it's far too genteel for such tabloid sport. Instead, backed by its faith in free markets and neo-liberal trade policies, the Economist came out in support not just of a British company, but of business itself, which it judged to be unfairly maligned in the spill fiasco.

"America's justifiable fury with BP is degenerating into a broader attack on business," The Economist's editors wrote in today's lead editorial.

The Economist expressed concern that business leaders who are "already gloomy, depressed by the economy and nervous of their president's attitude towards them" will likely not be encouraged by the treatment of BP.

Because Obama's now pushing "firms into doing his bidding"—the magazine's characterizaion of efforts to hold BP responsible for an environmental catastrophe of its own doing—The Economist draws parallels between the president and Russia's strong-armed former president and current prime minister. Hence the editors' new nickname: "Vladimir Obama."

So while Tony Hayward is now a tarnished British hero in the Tony Blair vein, national morale may well rebound with the prospect of a good old colonial trade war—or Cold War, as the case may be.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100618/ts_ynews/ynews_ts2721_2/print;_ylt=AoTPtMPWJmju6Y8I3Sy2b8TV.rt_;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

How Badly Has the Gulf Spill Hurt Obama's Image?
Tom Bevan Fri Jun 18, 1:00 am ET

Some observers have noted that while President Obama has faced intense criticism over his handling of the Gulf Oil spill during the last eight weeks, his approval rating remains more or less unchanged. Indeed, on April 21, the day after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sunk in the Gulf, President Obama’s approval rating in the RCP Average stood at 47.9% and his disapproval rating was at 46.9%. Despite all that’s transpired over the past two months, today President Obama’s approval rating in the RCP Average is two tenths of a point higher, at 48.1%, and his disapproval rating is five tenths of a point higher at 47.4%.

Much like the spill itself, however, below the surface there are indications that a subtle – and perhaps serious - erosion of the President’s image is taking place. While the most recent batch of polls does show President Obama’s overall job approval remaining steady, approval of his handling of the Gulf spill in particular has nose dived.

Three polls (AP/Gfk, CNN/Opinion Research, and Fox News/Opinion Dynamics) have tracked an approval rating for the President’s handling of the oil spill over the past month.

As you can see, while Obama’s overall approval rating suffered no net loss in the AP/Gfk and Fox News polls and just 3 points in the CNN poll, the net loss of approval for the President over his handling of the Gulf Oil spill in those same polls was 18, 21, and 13 points, respectively.

Additional poll questions probing other aspects of Obama’s handling of the oil spill show equally concerning numbers for the President:

In a Gallup poll conducted on June 11-13, 71% said that President Obama has “not been tough enough” in dealing with BP in regard to the oil spill. A nearly identical amount, 67%, said the same thing in the CNN poll.

In the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey, 68% said Obama has not acted “aggressive enough” and another 65% said he has not acted fast enough in responding to the crisis.

Perhaps most worrisome for the White House is a number from the ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week. Three months ago, Obama enjoyed a 30-point net positive margin on the question of whether he was a strong leader or not (65% Yes, 33% No). Today, that positive gap has been cut in half, with 57% in the current survey saying Obama is a strong leader and 43% saying he isn’t.

Clearly, then, these numbers demonstrate the public does take issue with the President’s handling of this crisis over the last eight weeks. And, though many people point to the President’s flat overall approval rating as a positive sign that his image is not sustaining serious damage, it may in fact signal the opposite.

The nation traditionally rallies around its President in a time of crisis. Though the crisis in the Gulf has unfolded much more slowly than a singular catastrophic event like 9/11 or the Oklahoma City Bombing, it’s nevertheless a gut wrenching catastrophe for the country that is looking to its President for leadership. Had Obama stepped up from the outset of the spill with an aggressive, authoritative response, it’s easy to imagine his approval rating shooting up five or ten points as he took control of the situation.

The fact Obama hasn’t received any bump from the crisis, and that his handling of it is viewed negatively by the American public, suggests that the stability in his overall approval rating is not so much a sign of strength as it is evidence of a huge missed opportunity. The public still wants to see the President succeed in managing the country through this crisis, even though they’re less than enamored with the job he’s done thus far.

The news Wednesday that Obama had secured BP’s commitment to put $20 billion in an escrow fund to pay claims administered by an independent third party may help stop some of the bleeding in Obama’s numbers in the short term.

But so long as the oil continues to flow - streaming live on cable television and on desktops around the country – and so long as the federal government’s containment efforts appear to be both chaotic and not terribly effective, the President will have trouble keeping the erosion of public support for his handling of this incident from negatively impacting his broader image.

Like the Gulf itself, once this crisis is over the President will have much cleanup work to do to try and restore public confidence in him as a competent leader who is in command.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitics/20100618/cm_rcp/how_badly_has_the_gulf_spill_hurt_obama039s_image/print;_ylt=AioIUliTfYQzghiiJBMKm5fSos4F;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP CEO's yacht outing infuriates Gulf residents
By Raphael Satter And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers Sat Jun 19, 9:49 pm ET
EMPIRE, La. – BP chief executive Tony Hayward took a day off Saturday to see his 52-foot yacht "Bob" compete in a glitzy race off England's shore, a leisure trip that further infuriated residents of the oil-stained Gulf Coast.

While Hayward's pricey ship whipped around the Isle of Wight on a good day for sailing — breezy and about 68 degrees — anger simmered on the steamy Gulf Coast, where crude has been washing in from the still-gushing spill.

"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in the crossroads town of Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."

BP spokespeople rushed to defend Hayward, who has drawn withering criticism as the public face of BP PLC's halting efforts to stop the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Company spokesman Robert Wine said the break is the first for Hayward since the Deepwater Horizon rig BP was leasing exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off the undersea gusher.

"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that," Wine said.

He noted Hayward is a well known as a fan of the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, one of the world's largest, which attracts more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as famous yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in a 50-nautical mile course around the island at England's southern tip.

"Bob" finished fourth in its group. It was not clear whether Hayward actually took part in Saturday's race or attended as a spectator.

The boat, made 10 years ago by the Annapolis, Md.-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design, lists for nearly $700,000.

Hayward had already angered many in the U.S. when he was quoted in the Times of London as suggesting that Americans were particularly likely to file bogus claims for compensation from the spill. He later shocked Louisiana residents by telling them that no one wanted to resolve the crisis as badly as he did because "I'd like my life back."

Ronnie Kennier, a 49-year-old oysterman from Empire, La., said Hayward's day among the sailboats showed once again just how out of touch BP executives are with the financial and emotional suffering along the Gulf.

"He wanted to get his life back," Kennier said. "I guess he got it."

In Washington, President Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel made the same observation Saturday on ABC's "This Week."

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden enjoyed a round of golf Saturday near Washington, something they've done on other weekends since the spill and a fact that wasn't lost on users of social networking sites. Twitter feeds compared Obama and Biden's golfing to Hayward's yachting, lumping them together as diversions of privileged people who should be paying more attention to the oil gushing into the Gulf.

"Our government, the executives at BP, it looks like they decide to worry about it later," said Capt. Dwayne Price, a charter fisherman in Grand Isle, La., who now spends his days shuttling media out to the oiled waters. "Things need to happen now. The longer this is strung out, the worse it's going to be."

Messages seeking comment were left for officials at the White House, who have struggled to counter criticism at home of how the administration has handled the disaster. An Associated Press-GfK poll released Tuesday showed 52 percent now disapprove of Obama's handling of the oil spill, up significantly from last month.

BP, Britain's largest company before the oil rig exploded, has lost about 45 percent of its value since the explosion — a drop that has alarmed millions of British retirees whose pension funds hold BP stock. Just this week, the company announced that it was canceling its quarterly dividend.

The British press, much more sympathetic than the American media to BP's plight, has expressed disbelief at the company's strategy.

"It is hard to recall a more catastrophically mishandled public relations response to a crisis than the one we are witnessing," the Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner wrote Friday.

About 50 miles off the coast, a newly expanded containment system is capturing or incinerating more than 1 million gallons of oil daily, the first time it has approached its peak capacity, according to the Coast Guard. BP hopes that by late June it will be able to keep nearly 90 percent of the flow from the broken pipe from hitting the ocean.

More than 120 million gallons have leaked from the well, according to the most pessimistic federal daily flow rate estimates. Oil has been washing up from Louisiana to Florida, killing birds and fish, coating delicate marshes and wetlands and covering pristine beaches with tar balls.

A pair of relief wells considered the best chance at a permanent fix won't be done until August.

BP has put many idled commercial fishermen to work on the cleanup. But not everyone.

Sai Stiffler spent Saturday doing some repairs on his shrimp boat at Delta Marina in Empire, La., after a passing shower made things stiflingly hot and muggy. He signed up for BP's "vessel of opportunity" program but hasn't been hired, and he was not pleased that Obama was playing golf and BP's CEO was at a yacht race while his life is on hold.

"Right now is no time for that," Stiffler said. "I don't think they know how bad people are hurting. They make a lot of promises but that's it."

Raymond Canevari, 59, of Pensacola, said he was insulted by the fact that Hayward would take in a yacht race while the oil still flows.

"I think everyone has the right to do what they want in their free time, but he doesn't have the right to have free time at all," said Canevari, who scouts the bayous, bays and Gulf for driftwood and other found objects, and turns the debris into nature-themed art. "Not until this crisis is resolved."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100620/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AioIUliTfYQzghiiJBMKm5ep_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[gmyers]

I heard they were going to suspend oil drilling for six months in the gulf and that BP would pay the people that worked on the drilling rigs. I wonder if thats true and how much they will pay them. I bet not nearly what they used to make. Like one woman said that woked in an oyster house said. She made $800 a week and BP was going to pay them $1000 a month.

[Jolie Rouge]

Far offshore, crews drill into Gulf to stop oil
By Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 27 mins ago

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – Fly by helicopter above the patchy wetlands along the Mississippi River Delta and past the floating boom and skimmers that have failed to protect the Gulf Coast from the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Keep following the finger-like oil slicks speckled orange and brown that threaten it still.

About 40 miles from the coast a fleet of ships appears. They look like toys packed in a two-mile-square patch of dull water. It's easy to see the approaching drill rig with its 200-foot derrick, offering what is likely the best chance for permanently stopping the nation's worst environmental disaster.

The Sikorsky chopper reaches it and settles on its landing pad. The thwack of the rotors quiets down, and a rig worker steps into the helicopter cabin.

"OK, welcome to the DDII," he says.

Transocean Ltd.'s Development Driller II is one of two rigs slowly grinding their drill bits 13,000 feet below the seafloor until they intersect the well damaged April 20 when another Transocean rig exploded, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive oil leak. A group of reporters that included The Associated Press had a rare chance to tour the rig Saturday.

Once one of the two relief wells intersects the damaged line, BP plans to pump heavy drilling mud in to stop the oil flow and plug the blown-out well with cement.

"It's really not a tough thing to do," said Mickey Fruge, the wellsite leader aboard the DDII for BP, which was leasing the rig when it blew and is responsible for stopping the oil.

But that doesn't mean it's easy. For starters, Fruge's team must hit a target seven inches across, or roughly the size of a salad plate, about three miles below the ocean surface. If the DDII or its sister rig DDIII fail, miss or just move too slowly, oil will keep gushing into the sea. A pair of relief wells took months to stop an undersea gusher in Mexico that started in the summer of 1979.

And no one on the rig has done it before because these deep sea interventions are so rare. That includes Wendell Guidry, Transocean's drilling superintendent on the rig, who has been in an oil field for 27 years and worked his way up from a clothes washer. But he insists in his Louisiana drawl that the job is business as usual.

"We try to keep the guys focused," he said. "We're just treating this like we treat any other well that we drill."

Glancing from the rig deck, it's clear this situation is not normal.

Out in the distance, another drilling rig is siphoning off oil and natural gas from the undersea well and burning it in a multi-nozzled flare. It looks like the flames are radiating from an oversized showerhead. Other ships hose off that rig's deck to keep the heat from building.

Meanwhile, a boom attached to a drill ship called the Discoverer Enterprise flares off natural gas taken from a containment cap that is sucking up oil from the well head. The distant flames are a constant reminder that crude and gas are leaking beneath the feet of those aboard the DDII as they walk across the see-through grating on its floor.

The Enterprise sits where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. Some of Guidry's crew knew Transocean workers on that rig.

It's "always, always on our mind," Guidry said.

BP PLC has said a relief well should be ready by August, and the DDIII is farther along, having reached a depth of nearly 11,000 feet below the seafloor. Still, Guidry said, it's unclear which rig will hit the target first.

"Never know what will happen," he said. "You never know."

Work goes around-the-clock on the DDII, which can hold 176 people. Eight thrusters on the rig keep it precisely positioned over the well it's drilling. The ship is so large that those aboard cannot feel it move on the water most of the time — unusually still for a vessel at sea.

As its drills cut deeper into the seafloor, it lowers steel casings into the freshly drilled hole. Working through the early morning Saturday, the DDII's crew gradually hoisted 40-foot sections of 18-inch casing with a crane and screwed them together using a 5,500-pound piece of equipment that works like a ratchet.

Fruge said that stretch of casings was cemented Sunday morning and will need until Monday to firm up before work can continue.

Eric Jackson, a tourpusher, was leading a sweaty seven-man crew in grease-smeared helmets and coveralls who were checking and greasing an oversized cap that eventually guided the casing into position. The deck around felt slick beneath a reporter's boots.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the top federal official in the spill response, has said construction on the relief wells remains ahead of schedule. Jackson, however, noted that setbacks are routine on a drilling rig. Hydraulic hoses can snap. Early Saturday morning, one set of tongs used to tighten the riser pipe broke down, forcing the teams to switch to a backup set. "It's business as usual, man," Jackson said. "Everybody tells us to be, 'Hey, don't let the pressure get to you.' This is what we do for a living, man. We drill wells. It's the same as any other day."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100621/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=AioIUliTfYQzghiiJBMKm5ep_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf paymaster: People are in 'desperate' shape
Mon Jun 21, 8:01 am ET

WASHINGTON – The man President Barack Obama picked to run the $20 billion Gulf oil spill damage fund said Monday many people are in "desperate financial straits" and need immediate relief.

"Do not underestimate the emotionalism and the frustration and the anger of people in the Gulf uncertain of their financial future," Kenneth Feinberg told interviewers. "It's very pronounced. I witnessed it firsthand last week."

Feinberg, who ran the victims claim fund set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, said he is determined to speed up payment of claims.

His appearance came a week after the administration worked out an arrangement with oil giant BP to establish an independent claims fund — initially $20 billion — and pledged to reconfigure the system and expedite payments. Feinberg said BP has paid out over $100 million so far, and various estimates place total claims so far in excess of $600 million.

"The top message is the message conveyed to me by the president," Feinberg said. " ... We want to get these claims out quicker. We want to get these claims out with more transparency." He said people can file electronically for relief, if they wish, and they need not hire a lawyer. He also said he believes that "when a person comes in and asks for emergency assistance, they shouldn't have to keep coming back," suggesting lump-sum emergency payments.

Asked how officials can guard against false claims, Feinberg said he didn't think that would be a major problem, and said that in the 9/11 experience, there were only a handful of such claims. He did say there could be an issue involving claimants who say they were indirectly harmed by the spill, such as a Boston restaurateur theoretically arguing that his business was hurt by the inability to bring shrimp in from the Gulf.

In such instances, Feinberg said, officials might have to resort to whatever existing state law says on that issue.

In another interview, he said, "The emergency payments going out under my watch do not require that any claimant give up rights to litigate or go forward in court ... If you want to litigate, go ahead."

But he added that he considers that "very unwise," because it could take years to resolve the issue that way.

"The emergency payments are without any conditions," Feinberg said.

He appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN and NBC's "Today" show.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100621/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_damage_claims/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

The 10 worst BP gaffes in Gulf oil spill.
By Mark Sappenfield Sun Jun 20, 8:14 am ET

The decision by BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward to spend a day with his family in England Saturday was perhaps defensible. Two months into the Gulf oil spill, some Americans might grudgingly admit that even a man charged with solving the worst environmental crisis in US history needed a day here or there to recharge the batteries.

The fact he spent that day yachting with his son in an exclusive race off the English coast was perhaps the starkest evidence yet of the BP chief’s deep misunderstanding of American public opinion – or his dismissal of it.

It is possible that, in the eyes of Americans, BP can't do anything right until it plugs the hole gushing tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet since the Deepwater Horizon blowout April 20, BP has hardly helped itself. Mr. Hayward’s day of yachting off the Isle of Wight – mere days after he appeared at once elusive and disinterested at congressional hearings – is the latest in a series of major public relations mistakes that have at times cast BP as bumbling, ill-informed, and callous.

1. Who’s in charge? On Friday, BP board Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg presented the news that many Americans had long been waiting for. Hayward was being shunted out of his lead role in the Gulf oil spill crisis, to be replaced by BP Managing Director Bob Dudley. On Saturday, BP media relations personnel said the chairman of the board was wrong. They said Mr. Svanberg was suggesting that BP was merely beginning a long-planned and gradual transition of authority to Mr. Dudley “over a period of time.”

2. The ‘small people’ It was not the first time Svanberg misspoke. After meeting with President Obama, Svanberg said he shared Mr. Obama’s compassion for the “small people” in the Gulf. Needless to say, the comment did not go over well. Spoken by a man who owns a yacht in Thailand, the phrase “small people” smelled of rank class condescension. Swedes, however, note that the word “småfolket” in Svanberg’s native Swedish has a positive connotation with undertones of egalitarianism.

3. ‘I want my life back’ Six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, Hayward uttered these words: “We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I'd like my life back.” To those shrimpers and fishermen who have essentially lost an entire year’s wages – not to mention the families of the 11 men killed in the blowout – this seemed an inordinately insensitive comment.

Moreover, it has now become the prism for Hayward’s yachting excursion. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday: “Well, to quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back, as he would say. And I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting.”

4. ‘Very, very modest’ impact On May 18 – a month after the blowout – Hayward told the BBC: "I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest." Four days earlier, he told the British newspaper, the Guardian: "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

The first has proven to be wildly off base. The second, while containing a kernel of scientific truth, disregards the fact that oil and dispersants could be toxic to certain animals critical to the food chain even in trace amounts. Moreover, the oil has proven concentrated enough to foul the wetlands and beaches of the Gulf Coast.

5. ‘A trickle’ On June 8, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said that the spill "should be down to a relative trickle by Monday or Tuesday." According to the best scientific estimates, between 10,000 and 35,000 barrels of oil (420,000 to 1.5 million gallons) are still leaking into the Gulf daily.

6. 5,000 barrels a day. Part of the reason for the continued leak is that BP low-balled the flow rate from the well and then refused to try to amend it. For a short time after the blowout, BP estimated that the well beneath the Deepwater Horizon was spewing 1,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf. That was swiftly changed to 5,000 barrels daily. Last week, scientists suggested that the real number could be as much as 60,000 barrels a day – and no less than 35,000.

In the early days, when 5,000 barrels was the working estimate, BP said: “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort,” a BP spokesman told The New York Times.

As a result of that decision, BP didn’t put enough oil-collecting capacity on the surface. It is now rushing to bring in more to collect the excess 10,000 to 35,000 barrels a day of leaking oil.

7. ‘Top kill’: 70 percent chanceThe underestimation of the flow rate mirrors the repeated overestimation by BP of its own capabilities. Hayward said that the failed “top kill” procedure, which would have stopped the oil, had a 60 to 70 percent chance of working. It failed.

8. ‘We have turned the corner.’ Earlier, on May 17, BP stuck a siphon into the ruined riser pipe – collecting 1,000 barrels a day – leading Hayward to say: "I do feel that we have, for the first time, turned the corner in this challenge." That siphoning effort was later abandoned.

9. What spill? When BP share prices recently plummeted, BP intended to convey the idea that it could handle the costs of the Gulf oil spill. Its statement, however, was obtuse to the point of absurdity: “The company is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.”

10. Waste of money? Six weeks after the spill began, BP started a $50 million TV ad campaign, promising to restore the Gulf. Obama said the money would have been better spent on relief efforts and damage claim.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/309451/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYIHk594;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Jimmy Buffett plans free concert on Alabama beach
Mon Jun 21, 9:56 am ET

GULF SHORES, Ala. – Jimmy Buffett and a few of his friends plan to give a free concert on the Alabama coast to show support for the Gulf region.

Alabama tourism director Lee Sentell says show will be July 1 on the beach at Gulf Shores.

Buffett's website says the concert is meant to demonstrate support for the people, businesses and culture of the Gulf Coast. It will be broadcast live on CMT.

Buffett and his Coral Reefer Band will be joined in Gulf Shores by Sonny Landreth, Zac Brown Band, Kenny Chesney, Jesse Winchester and Allen Toussaint.

A special souvenir T-shirt will be designed for the concert. It will be available online and at the show.

___

Online: http://www.margaritaville.com

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Doesn't sound like too many folks are impressed with this Jimmy! The entertainment world is boycotting BP but I think maybe Jimmy's intent is to help the folks in the Gulf Shores area...his sister has a restaurant there. And he has one in Panama City and other places. No matter what anyone else might think...this is HIS business! This is ...at the present anyways...still a FREE country...I hope...that I know of. I guess everyone has an agenda and opinion.....and that we just don't always agree. What a mess our country and society is in ): So sad.

[Jolie Rouge]

By the numbers: Oil leak wouldn't fill Superdome
By Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer Mon Jun 21, 5:58 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Overwhelmed and saddened by the gargantuan size of the Gulf oil spill?

A little mathematical context to the spill size can put the environmental catastrophe in perspective. Viewing it through some lenses, it isn't that huge. The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months.

On a more human scale, the spill seems more daunting. Take the average-sized living room. The amount of oil spilled would fill 9,200 of them.

Since the BP oil rig exploded on April 20, about 126.3 million gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf. That calculation is based on the higher end of the government's range of barrels leaked per day and the oil company BP's calculations for the amount of oil siphoned off as of Monday morning. Using the more optimistic end of calculations, the total spill figure is just shy of 68 million gallons.

For this by-the-numbers exercise, The Associated Press is using the higher figure.

For every gallon of oil that BP's well has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, there is more than 5 billion gallons of water already in it. And the mighty Mississippi adds another billion gallons every five minutes or so, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

So BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward was factually correct last month when he said the spill was "relatively tiny" compared to what he mischaracterized as a "very big ocean."

But another big number that Hayward provided on Thursday also offers some troubling news. He said the reservoir of oil under the sea that is the source for the leak is believed to hold about 2.1 billion gallons of oil. That leaves about 2 billion gallons left to spew. So there are about 16 gallons of oil underneath the sea floor yet to gush for every gallon that has already fouled the Gulf. If the problem were never fixed, that would mean another two years of oil spilling based on the current flow rate.

More not-so-dreadful context: The amount of oil spilled so far could only fill the cavernous New Orleans Superdome about one-seventh of the way up. On the other hand, it could fill 15 Washington Monuments and two-thirds of the way up a 16th. If the oil were poured on a football field — complete with endzones — it would measure nearly 100 yards high.

If you put the oil in gallon milk jugs and lined them up, they would stretch about 11,000 miles. That's a roundtrip from the Gulf to London, BP's headquarters, and a side trip from New Orleans to Washington for Hayward to testify.

BP has spent more than $54.8 million lobbying federal officials in Washington since 2000; that's about 43 cents for every gallon of oil it has spilled. Since 2000, the oil and gas industry — along with their employees — has contributed $154.2 million to candidates for federal office. That's $1.22 for each gallon of oil spilled. Of that money, 78 percent went to Republicans and the rest to Democrats.

Take the 126.3 million gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf and convert it to gasoline, which is what Americans mostly use it for. That produces 58.6 million gallons of gas — the amount American drivers burn every three hours and 43 minutes. It's enough to fill up the gas tanks in nearly 3.7 million cars — more than those in Louisiana and Mississippi combined.

At $2.75 a gallon for gas — the national average — that's more than $161 million worth spilled into the Gulf.

Want your own piece of this spill? If all the oil spilled were divided up and equal amounts given to every American, we would all get about four soda cans full of crude oil that no one really wants.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil firms challenge US drilling freeze
1 hr 43 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Oil firms went to court seeking to lift a six-month freeze on deepwater drilling as the US government slapped BP with another major bill for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The White House sent BP a bill for 51 million dollars, the third sent to the British energy giant and its partners for government expenses incurred in efforts to halt the oil spill under a US law requiring oil firms to pay for cleanups.

Two earlier bills to BP and other responsible parties this month amounting to 70.89 million dollars have been paid in full.

BP also said it has spent two billion dollars so far on cleaning up the spill and compensating residents and businesses facing ruin nine weeks into the nation's worst ever environmental disaster.

Some 32 US firms, whose crews and equipment have been left idle since US President Barack Obama imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf, were urging federal judge Martin Feldman to ease the restrictions.

"There's an ecosystem of businesses that are being harmed every day by this moratorium," Carl Rosenblum, an attorney for the oil companies, insisted in a reference to the environmental damage being inflicted on southern US shores.

But government lawyer Guillermo Montero replied that deepwater drilling was more complicated than many other industries and the government had to review and, if necessary, update its safety protocols.

"The Deepwater Horizon incident was a game-changer. It really showed the risks inherent in deepwater drilling," he told the New Orleans court hearing.

Feldman said he could rule on the case as early as Tuesday, but certainly no later than noon (1700 GMT) Wednesday.

In a deal hammered out with the White House last week, BP agreed to set up a 20-billion-dollar compensation fund over the next four years to pay for the costs stemming from the spill.

It also set aside 100 million dollars to compensate oil workers laid off by the moratorium imposed after a deadly April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, the BP-leased rig off the Louisiana coast.

Kenneth Feinberg, who has been named to run the fund, said Obama told him: "Get these claims paid. Get them paid quickly."

But the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that BP's additional sum for unemployed workers was a goodwill drop in the ocean compared with the estimated 300 million dollars being lost every month as rigs are mothballed.

BP had successfully argued in the negotiations that the moratorium was a US administration policy decision, for which they were not responsible.

"You won't find many lawyers who will say when the government imposes a moratorium it's the company's obligation to help the workers impacted," a BP negotiator told the business daily.

BP had also managed to fend off White House demands to pay to restore Gulf marshes and waterways -- already blighted since the 2005 Hurricane Katrina -- to a better condition than before the spill.

Meanwhile, BP boss Tony Hayward was openly mocked by the White House after he took part in a yacht race at the weekend, in another public relations blunder by the gaffe-prone chief executive.

"If Tony Hayward wants to put a skimmer on that yacht and bring it down to the Gulf, we'd be happy to have his help," spokesman Bill Burton said to laughter in the White House briefing room.

And in more bad news for BP, a worker who had been on the Deepwater Horizon revealed he had alerted both the British company and Transocean, the rig's owners, to a leak found in the control pod of the blowout preventer -- a system of valves which failed to shut off the oil flow when the explosion happened.

"We saw a leak on the pod, so by seeing the leak we informed the company men," Tyrone Benton told the BBC.

"They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don't have to stop production... they just shut it down and worked off another pod."

The news came as internal BP documents suggested that in the worst case scenario some 100,000 barrels of oil per day could be spilling into the Gulf -- far higher than US official estimates of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day.

BP says it is containing around 25,000 barrels per day, and has called in more ships and equipment to boost the effort. But it has admitted the spill will not be permanently capped until it has completed two relief wells, with the first set to be finished in August.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Some oil spill events on Monday, June 21, 2010

A summary of events on Monday, June 21, Day 62 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well.

MORATORIUM

Companies that ferry people and supplies to offshore oil rigs asked a federal judge Monday to lift a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects imposed in the aftermath of the massive Gulf spill. After hearing two hours of arguments, Judge Martin Feldman said he will decide by Wednesday whether to overturn the ban imposed by President Barack Obama's administration after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion off the Louisiana coast.

ANOTHER MULTIMILLION DOLLAR BILL

The Obama administration has sent another multimillion-dollar bill to BP and other parties being held responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The latest bill, the third in the nine weeks since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig collapsed, is for $51.4 million. The White House said in a statement Monday night that BP and others have already paid the first two bills, totaling nearly $71 million.

NEW AGENCY, NEW DIRECTOR

A former federal prosecutor took over Monday as director of a new government agency that oversees offshore drilling and other oil and gas development. Michael R. Bromwich, 56, a former assistant U.S. attorney and Justice Department inspector general, will lead a reorganization of the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed an order renaming the agency the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. The agency, which both regulates the oil and gas industry and collects billions in royalties from it, will be known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy or BOE for short, Salazar said.

ATLANTIC COAST CLAIMS

Attorneys general in 11 Atlantic Coast states asked BP PLC for assurances that legitimate claims from their residents will be paid if oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill reaches their shores. The prosecutors also said in a letter sent Monday that they want BP to preserve all documents related to the spill and response. The documents could be needed if any of the states were to sue.

DEMOCRATIC AD

The Democratic National Committee has unveiled a new television ad that calls Republicans oil company loyalists who would rather apologize to BP than hold it accountable for the massive spill in the Gulf. The 30-second ad started running Monday on national and Washington cable stations. It includes a clip of Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas apologizing to BP for what he called a $20 billion "shakedown." Company executives had met with President Barack Obama and agreed to a compensation fund for those affected by the spill. Barton later took back the apology.

BP CEO CANCELS

BP chief executive Tony Hayward canceled his appearance at a London oil conference on Tuesday, citing his commitment to the Gulf of Mexico relief effort. The announcement Monday that Hayward will skip Tuesday's session of the World National Oil Companies Congress follows stinging criticism of Hayward's weekend outing to the Isle of Wight to see his boat compete in a high-profile English yacht race.

COST

BP has spent $2 billion in two months of fighting its Gulf of Mexico oil spill and compensating victims, with no end in sight to the disaster or the price tag. The British oil giant released its latest tally of response costs Monday, including $105 million paid out so far to 32,000 claimants. The figure does not include a $20 billion fund that BP PLC last week agreed to set up to continue compensating Gulf residents and businesses. Scores of lawsuits are piling up against BP for the April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers and the ensuing oil spill that has yet to be capped. Shares of BP, which have lost about half their value since the rig Deepwater Horizon burned and sank off the Louisiana coast, were down nearly 5 percent Monday in London trading at $5.06.

DAMAGE CLAIMS

The man President Barack Obama picked to run the $20 billion damage fund said many people are in "desperate financial straits" and need immediate relief. "Do not underestimate the emotionalism and the frustration and the anger of people in the Gulf uncertain of their financial future," Kenneth Feinberg told interviewers Monday. "It's very pronounced. I witnessed it firsthand last week." Feinberg, who ran the victims claim fund set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said he is determined to speed up payment of claims.

RELIEF WELLS

The best hope of ending the disaster rests on teams drilling two relief wells meant to stop the seafloor oil gusher, a daunting task: Their drills have to hit a target roughly the size of a salad plate about three miles below the water's surface. If the workers aboard Transocean's Development Driller II or its sister rig DDIII miss or move too slowly, oil will keep pouring into the sea. As much as 125 million gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf. No one on the rig has done this before because these deep sea interventions are so rare. But rig workers brushed off worries and the pressure to succeed. "It's really not a tough thing to do," says Mickey Fruge, the wellsite leader aboard the DDII for BP, which was leasing the rig that blew up and is responsible for stopping the oil.

HOW BIG?

Overwhelmed and saddened by the gargantuan size of the Gulf oil spill? A little mathematical context to the spill size can put the environmental catastrophe in perspective. Viewing it through some lenses, it isn't that huge. The Mississippi River pours as much water into the Gulf of Mexico in 38 seconds as the BP oil leak has done in two months. On a more human scale, the spill seems more daunting. Take the average-sized living room. The amount of oil spilled would fill 9,200 of them.

HEALTH

Health officials say there seems to be little reason to worry about the spill's health effects at this point. But some note that health effects months or years from now remain a question mark, particularly for the workers who are in the thick of it, cleaning up oil from the BP spill in the Gulf. Public health officials and scientists will take up the topic at a two-day meeting beginning Tuesday in New Orleans, organized by the Institute of Medicine at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services. The group will also talk about how best to watch for any potential problems. HHS has already set aside $10 million to study cleanup workers and Gulf residents over time.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Head of spill victims fund pledges fast payments
By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 21, 8:14 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – The administrator of a $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf oil spill victims pledged Monday to speed payment of claims as a federal judge considered whether to lift a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling.

Kenneth Feinberg, who has been tapped by the White House to run the fund, said many people are in desperate financial straits and need immediate relief.

"We want to get these claims out quicker," he said. "We want to get these claims out with more transparency."

Feinberg, who ran the claim fund set up for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said BP has paid out over $100 million so far. Various estimates place total claims so far in excess of $600 million.

BP said it has spent $2 billion fighting the spill for the last two months and compensating victims, with no end in sight. It's likely to be at least August before crews finish two relief wells that are the best chance of stopping the flow of oil.

The British oil giant released its latest tally of response costs, including $105 million paid out so far to 32,000 claimants. That figure does not include the $20 billion fund BP PLC last week agreed to set up for residents and businesses hurt by the spill.

Also Monday, the government sent BP a $51.4 million bill for the response effort. BP has already paid two other bills totaling $70.9 million.

Shares of BP, which have lost about half their value since the April 20 oil rig disaster that killed 11 workers, fell nearly 3 percent Monday in New York trading to $30.86. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. but run by BP.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward canceled a scheduled Tuesday appearance at a London oil conference, citing his commitment to the Gulf relief effort. The last-minute pullout followed stinging criticism of Hayward's attendance at a yacht race on the Isle of Wight off the coast of southern England on Saturday.

President Barack Obama's administration has also been struggling to show it is responding forcefully to the spill, which has gushed anywhere from 68 million to 126 millions gallons of oil into the Gulf.

As part of that effort, the Interior Department halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells in the Gulf.

But a lawsuit filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, La., claims the government arbitrarily imposed the moratorium without any proof that the operations posed a threat. Hornbeck says the moratorium could cost Louisiana thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost wages.

After hearing two hours of arguments Monday in New Orleans federal court, Judge Martin Feldman said he will decide by Wednesday whether to overturn the moratorium.

Plaintiffs' attorney Carl Rosenblum said the six-month suspension of drilling work could prove more economically devastating than the spill itself.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," Rosenblum told the judge Monday.

Government lawyers said the Interior Department has demonstrated that industry regulators need more time to study the risks of deepwater drilling and identify ways to make it safer.

"The safeguards and regulations in place on April 20 did not create a sufficient margin of safety," said Justice Department attorney Guillermo Montero.

Feldman asked a government lawyer why the Interior Department decided to suspend deepwater drilling after the rig explosion when it didn't bar oil tankers from Alaskan waters after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 or take similar actions in the wake of other industrial accidents.

"The Deepwater Horizon blowout was a game-changer," Montero said. "It really illustrates the risks that are inherent in deepwater drilling."

Feldman asked Rosenblum if it's true that a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Hornbeck suggests "basically things are pretty good" for the company and it can survive the moratorium. Rosenblum said the full impact of the shutdown cannot be calculated.

"Thousands of businesses will be affected," he said. "These dominoes are falling as we speak."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's office filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs' suit. A lawyer for the state told Feldman that the federal government did not consult Louisiana officials before imposing the moratorium, in violation of federal law.

Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for several environmental groups that support the moratorium, said six months is a reasonable time for drilling to be suspended while the government studies the risks and regulations governing the industry.

"The risks here are new," she said.

Government lawyers said the plaintiffs haven't seen much of the data that served as the basis for the Interior Department's decision to suspend drilling operations.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar "wants to be sure deepwater drilling is as safe as we all thought it was on the day before the incident on April 20," said government lawyer Brian Collins.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas in Houston listened to Monday's hearing over the telephone. Atlas is presiding over a similar case against the Interior Department filed by Diamond Offshore Co., which operates a fleet of drilling rigs.

Along the coast Monday, some cleanup workers reported progress.

On Barataria Bay off the coast of Louisiana, thick globs of oil that washed onto marshy islands a week ago had disappeared, leaving a mass of stained bushes and partly yellowed grasses.

Blackened lengths of boom surrounded the islands, which were still teeming with brown pelicans, gulls and other seabirds, some with visible signs of oil on their plumage. Nearby, shrimp boats that have been transformed into skimmers hauled absorbent booms across the water's surface, collecting some of the remaining oil.

Crews aboard Navy and Coast Guard boats teamed with local fishermen using booms to funnel oil into a vessel and haul it offshore.

This is the area's new economy — dependent as ever on the sprawling bay, but now those who made their living harvesting its bounty are focused on its healing.

"It looks 10 times better than it did a week ago," said Carey O'Neil, 42, a commercial fisherman idled by the spill who now provides tours of the damaged areas for media and government observers in his 23-foot boat anchored in Grand Isle. "But what impact will this have for the future — two, three, four, even 10 years? That's what worries me."

The number of oil-soaked birds in the area is down significantly, from 60 or 70 a day at the triage center on Grand Isle to more like seven or eight, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"We've been sending 55 boats a day out pretty much since day one, when the oil hit this area, and so we feel like we've really made inroads," he said.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil threatens key Gulf algae and its ecosystem
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI Associated Press writer Published: Jun 22, 2010

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. (AP) -- It looks dirty and muddy, a brown mass of weeds with gas-filled berries that allow it to float on the Gulf of Mexico's waters. Sometimes it washes ashore, getting caught in the toes of barefoot beachgoers or stuck to the bottom of flip-flops.

It appears to be just another sea plant.

But this Sargassum algae - sometimes called sea holly or Gulf weed - is key to hundreds of species of marine life in the Gulf. Now, the oil is threatening to suffocate it, dealing a blow to fisheries and the ecosystem that scientists say may take years to recover. And as the algae dies in the Gulf, less of the vital plant will reach the Sargasso Sea - some 3,000 miles away through the loop current - potentially harming that ecosystem as well.

Already, oiled sea holly has washed ashore in Orange, Ala., and scientists are seeing larger patches of it mingling with the offshore oil slicks.

"We've seen Sargassum mats from the air co-occurring with oil slicks. They're in the same spot," said Sean Powers, a marine scientist at the University of South Alabama, who is using a National Science Foundation grant to track the seaweed and its surrounding marine life.

Sea holly washes up on Gulf of Mexico and East Coast beaches throughout the summer, jam-packed with tiny shrimp and crabs, little shells and sediment, a treasure trove for children. On this sandy barrier island, clumps of sea holly wash up, forming patches of brown on the white sand.

Like underwater coral reefs, these algae mats are critical habitats for marine life. Tuna, Mahi-mahi, dolphin fish, Billfish, shrimp, crabs and sea turtles all use the algae to spawn, sunbathe or hide from predators, often while noshing on it. The algae's own exclusive community-brown or yellowish fish with weed-like tails, unusual tiny shrimp and crab and unique seahorses, have adapted in color and behavior to live only there.

"Once it's oiled, from everything we know of the effects of oil, all of those animals that live in the Sargassum will die," Powers said.

Similar to phytoplankton - the nearly invisible floating plant life- sea holly is at the base of the marine food chain, said Dennis Heinemann, a fishery scientist with the nonprofit, Washington-based environmental group Ocean Conservancy.

Sea holly attracts so much marine life to it, fishermen congregate around the long weed lines formed by the algae, knowing it could increase their catch.

But experts say oil can kill the Gulf weed either by poisoning it or by restricting its ability to breathe or get sunlight.

Relying on the weed are 145 species of invertebrates, 100 fish species, 5 types of sea turtles and 19 different seabirds, said Ellycia Harrould-Kolieb, a marine scientist with the Washington-based nonprofit Oceana.

"They're trained to cue in on that Sargassum," Powers said, pointing specifically to younger fish and animals. "It's the only structure out there that provides them any refuge from predators."

Unlike land plants, Sargassum has few seeds and propagates by splitting off, creating new growth. When it dies, it leaves little behind. Powers estimates it would take at least three years to recover to pre-oil spill Sargassum levels, possibly longer.

While animals are resilient, habitat is not, said Bob Shipp, chairman of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama.

Past experience, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, shows that if a habitat is harmed, the ecosystem will never recover in the same way. The herring that had once been a mainstay of the Alaskan sound never returned after the spill, partly because its foraging habitat had been destroyed, he said.

"We could see a whole new system created following the spill, and not a good one," Shipp said, noting a great deal of the Gulf economy relies on robust fisheries of red snapper, grouper, trout, flounder, bluefin tuna and other seafood.

"The ripple effect is going to be very extensive," Shipp said.

Sargassum is also awash in legend, including stories about vessels getting stuck in the Sargasso Sea's thick algae mats, some covering acres of the water's surface. Gulf of Mexico tourists sometimes view it as trash, annoyed it is not cleared off beloved white sandy beaches. Recently, some people have mistaken dead strands of Sargassum for oil washing up on Gulf beaches.

Until about two years ago, it was believed the Sargassum found in the Gulf originated in the North Atlantic.

Satellite images and research have shown, however, that the Sargasso Sea actually gets its algae mats from the Gulf, where the seaweed grows and propagates before getting pushed east through the loop current, around Florida and into the central North Atlantic.

"That would mean that the Sargassum that's lost in the Gulf will impact the weed in the North Atlantic, the tuna, the fisheries," Powers said. "This could have a larger effect."

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/96884319.html?showAll=y&c=y

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf rig owner criticizes Obama's drilling halt
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press writer June 22, 2010 - UPDATED: 9:40 a.m.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The owner of the offshore rig involved in the massive Gulf oil spill sharply criticized the U.S. government's six-month ban on deepwater drilling Tuesday.

Transocean Ltd. president Steven Newman told reporters at an oil industry conference in London that there were things President Barack Obama's administration "could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit."

Transocean owns the Deepwater Horizon rig, which was run by British oil company BP PLC. An April 20 explosion on the rig killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

A federal judge in New Orleans is considering whether to lift the moratorium, imposed after the disaster began. Judge Martin Feldman said he will decide by Wednesday.

During a two-hour hearing Monday, plaintiffs attorney Carl Rosenblum said the suspension of drilling work could prove more economically devastating than the spill itself.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," Rosenblum said.

Government lawyers said the Interior Department has demonstrated industry regulators need more time to study the risks of deepwater drilling and identify ways to make it safer.

"The safeguards and regulations in place on April 20 did not create a sufficient margin of safety," said Justice Department attorney Guillermo Montero.

The Interior Department imposed the drilling moratorium as part of the Obama administration's effort to show it was responding to the disaster. No new permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf are being approved and drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells has been suspended.

But the lawsuit Feldman is considering, filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, La., claims the government arbitrarily imposed the moratorium without any proof that the operations posed a threat. Hornbeck, which ferries people and supplies to offshore rigs, says the moratorium could cost Louisiana thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost wages.

During Monday's hearing, Feldman asked a government lawyer why the Interior Department decided to suspend deepwater drilling after the rig explosion when it didn't bar oil tankers from Alaskan waters after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 or take similar actions in the wake of other industrial accidents.

"The Deepwater Horizon blowout was a game-changer," Montero said. "It really illustrates the risks that are inherent in deepwater drilling."

Meanwhile, Kenneth Feinberg, who has been tapped by the White House to run a $20 billion fund set up to help people harmed by the spill, pledged to speed payments.

"We want to get these claims out quicker," he said. "We want to get these claims out with more transparency."

Feinberg, who ran the claim fund set up for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said BP has paid out over $100 million so far. Various estimates place total claims so far at more than $600 million.

BP said it has spent $2 billion fighting the spill for the last two months and compensating victims, with no end in sight. It's likely to be at least August before crews finish two relief wells that are the best chance of stopping the flow of oil. Scientists estimate the blown-out well has gushed anywhere from 68 million to 126 millions gallons of oil into the Gulf.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/96882814.html

comment


I have deep sympathy for the victims & their families related to the BP rig explosion. I also have deep sympathy for the business people being denied their right to ply their trade since this catastrophe. I don't think the answer is the moratorium on offshore deepwater drilling. If there is a plane crash should we discontinue flying until we "figure something out?" As usual when something goes wrong we get knee-jerk reactions from politicians with their finger in the air approach. Enforce the rules that are in place regarding safety measures & testing and listen when someone recognizes & points out a problem. Putting thousands more Louisiana oil workers out of work isn't going to do anything to resolve this problem. The administration of Pres BHO is seizing on the opportunity to push their cap and tax plans. Heaven help us all!!

[Jolie Rouge]

BP's "Last Resort" well might not work
By SANDY DAVIS Advocate staff writer June 20, 2010 - Page: 1A

From almost Day One of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has said that if everything else fails to shut down the company’s gushing well, the long-awaited relief well will do the job.

Last week, Tony Hayward, BP’s embattled chief executive officer, told Congress a relief well is now the only hope left to shut off the out-of-control well.

“There are no other options,” Hayward told Congress. “The pressure in this well is such that it’s not possible to kill it from the top.”

That was evident several weeks ago when the company tried to shut off the spewing well by shooting shredded golf balls, tires and ropes along with heavy drilling mud down through the top of the well. But the “top kill” effort failed.

In fact, BP officials and United States Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is in charge of the federal response to the oil leak, said the pressure put on the well bore was so great during “top kill,” that the situation could have been made worse: The well bore could have come apart and the oil could have started leaking through the sea floor with no way to contain it.

There’s only one way to fix all of these problems, Hayward said.

“We’ll have to rely on the relief wells,” he told Congress.

But does a relief well work?

A relief well is a diagonally drilled well that intersects with the original well. Cement is placed in the leaking well to plug it.

Most oil experts say it will work. But they warn that BP should take its time drilling the well to avoid the problems the company previously had when it drilled the first well and ended up with what one BP engineer called a “nightmare well.”

Dwayne Bourgoyne, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Mines, said early reports show the company made fundamental errors drilling the first well.

“The first errors are ones that were related to the company being in a hurry to finish the well,” Bourgoyne said. “They’re going to have to resist pressure from just about everyone to get this relief well finished quickly.”

But last week, Allen and Kent Wells, BP’s vice president of Exploration, both said drilling for the first relief well was ahead of schedule.

“We anticipate over the next three to four weeks they will close in and be able to tap into the well itself,” Allen said Thursday of how close the first relief well is to BP’s blown-out Macondo well on Block 252 of the Mississippi Canyon in the Gulf.

Allen said Friday that the first relief well, which the Development Driller III began drilling May 2, has reached a depth of 15,677 feet.

Development Driller II began drilling the second relief well on May 16, at the request of President Barack Obama, as a backup to the first relief well. It’s lagging behind and has reached 9,662 feet below the surface of the Gulf, Allen said.

Early estimates for completion of both wells was early- to mid-August. While Allen said Friday that the first well could be finished early, Wells was reluctant to agree.

“Things have gone well but that doesn’t always mean they’ll continue to go well,” Wells told a group of reporters during a technical briefing. “We haven’t changed our official completion date. It’s still early August.”

The leak began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. It collapsed into the Gulf two days later.

Since then, oil continues to gush from the well at a rate of 35,000 barrels to 60,000 barrels of oil a day, a group of government scientists has said.

BP is capturing about 25,000 barrels a day using two containment devices: a lower marine riser cap and an Evergreen flaring or burning device.

But BP’s live video feed shows that some oil is escaping the containment attempts and is still pouring into the Gulf.

It is the worst oil leak in U.S. history.

Killing the well
Relief wells are drilled diagonally and the goal is to intersect with the original well. Drilling on the relief wells began about a half-mile from the site of the original well.

When it reaches the original well, the relief well will first drill into the space between the rock and earth strata and the outside of the casing, a larger pipe that holds the smaller drilling pipe inside.

Wells said that at some point, drillers will cut into the casing of the original well.

Finally, relief well drillers will begin pouring drilling mud, which is much heavier than the oil and gas, into the well.

Drilling mud well help control the pressure and stop the flow of oil and gas. In other words, they’ll kill the well.

Once it is under control, cement plugs will be injected into the well.

BP’s Macondo well is about 18,000 feet below the Gulf’s surface, which includes 5,000 feet of Gulf water. That leaves the first relief well only about 2,500 feet above BP’s pay-zone.

Drillers call the area where there are piles of rocks with pores filled with oil pay zones.

Jeff Hughes, president of the American Association of Drilling Engineers, said there is enormous pressure at the depth, estimating it’s about 13,000 pounds per square inch.

The pressure sucks the oil and gas out of the pores of the rocks and sends them up the drilling pipe to the waiting oil companies on the Gulf’s surface.

The relief well is within 200 feet of the original well, but still 2,500 feet above the oil, Wells said Friday.

From there, the company will start the slow process of “ranging,” he said.

During ranging, workers drill a few feet and then send out sensor devices to see if they can locate the original well.

Wells said it takes time because the work is done slowly. Finding the well is done by trial and error

“What we’re doing is honing in on where the well is,” he said. “We’ll pinpoint an area and see if we made the right progress.”

If not, they’ll cement that area, back up and try again.

“We want to know exactly where it is,” Wells said.

Once they find the original well, they will continue to drill down, staying parallel but close to the original well. It’s unclear how far down they’ll drill before they intersect it.

The relief well, which is the size of a Frisbee, is trying to find the blown-out well, which is also about 10 inches wide; one Frisbee looking for another 15,000 feet below the surface of the water.

David Resnick, who in about two weeks will be president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said Friday that there is almost no chance BP will hit its target the first time around.

“If they do, I’ll be impressed,” said Resnick, who has about 40 years of experience drilling in the Gulf.

But it is unknown whether BP will reveal how many tries it takes them to find the original well.

Bourgoyne, who teaches at the Colorado School of Mines, said BP’s relief well drillers do have at least one advantage.

In the original well, drillers put in casing, the metal pipe that encloses the much-smaller drilling pipe, he said.

“They will be able to detect that metal,” Bourgoyne said of the casing. “They’ll be using a tool that’s almost like a compass and it will respond to the metal.”

[continues]

[Jolie Rouge]

Other relief wells
The worst oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico happened June 3, 1979, when the Ixtoc I well in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche blew out, Tyler Priest said.

Priest is one of the authors of the 1997 book “Offshore Pioneers, Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas.” He is also a professor and director of Global Studies at the University of Houston.

The Ixtoc I rig exploded in 150 feet of water when drillers lost control of the well, which was 11,863 feet below the sea floor. But unlike the Deepwater Horizon, all 70 rig workers were rescued, Priest said.

The well was drilled by Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, and Brown & Root. But Pemex took the lead in trying to plug the well.

Pemex tried a top kill, a junk shot and even a “sombrero,” similar to BP’s planned “top hat.” That’s when a cap that looks much like a top hat, or in Mexico’s case, a sombrero, is placed over the leak to capture the oil.

The “sombrero” was deemed a failure because it was too small compared with the amount of oil leaking and the pressure from the well.

By the end of June, Pemex decided to drill two relief wells, Priest said. Pemex famously estimated that the relief wells would stop the flow by October.

That didn’t happen. It took until November for the first relief well to reach the original well and February for the second relief well to reach it.

Bad weather, particularly hurricanes, caused most of the delays, Priest said.

But killing the original well wasn’t easy, even when the relief wells reached their target, Priest said. The oil from the blown-out well didn’t stop flowing until March 25, 1980.

Oil from the well soiled more than 100 miles of Texas beaches.

The Ixtoc 1 leaked about 3.3 million barrels of oil over a 10-month period, making it one of history’s worst leaks — at least so far.

It’s difficult to tell how much oil has leaked into the Gulf from the Deepwater Horizon well because BP’s containment devices haven’t captured much oil compared with what’s leaking

But if all of the oil had leaked into the Gulf for the past 60 days from the Deepwater Horizon well, it would mean that 2.1 million barrels to 3.6 million barrels have already leaked.

Technological advances
Experts say that Pemex’s problems with relief wells should not happen to BP.

“Technology has come a long way since then,” said Hughes, the president of American Association of Drilling Engineers.

Even if BP weren’t drilling relief wells, it probably would be drilling a diagonal well, Hughes said.

“You drill straight down when you’re drilling an exploratory well,” Hughes said of BP’s first well. “Then you drill a development well, which is what BP would be drilling now to produce the oil and gas, and that’s done diagonally.”

He does acknowledge that “steering” a directional drill bit is a little harder than drilling straight down into the earth. But he says it still falls under “routine.”

“They shouldn’t have any trouble at all,” he said.

Hughes said the challenge is simply that BP is “drilling a deep well in deep water.”

One of the most-recent well blow outs occurred in the Timor Sea off of the coast of Australia.

Drilled by the Thai-owned PTT Exploration and Production Co., the well exploded in August.

It leaked for 10 weeks while the company worked to drill a relief well.

But the project hit a major snag when the rig drilling the relief well also exploded and burned.

Once drilling began again, it took five tries before the relief well found the original well.

Workers stopped the leak in November, but didn’t plug the well until January, records show.

One of the challenges facing the relief well drillers is the chance that once they hit the original well, drilling mud they’re pumping will disappear.

The mud is supposed to circulate — go down to the bottom of the well and come back up. Drillers should be able to account for all of it.

“When drilling mud disappears, that’s not a good sign,” Hughes said.

He was on a rig several years ago near Marsh Island in the Gulf when drillers started losing drilling mud. The well, which produced gas, blew out, and the rig had to be evacuated. The company ended up drilling a relief well to close off the original well.

Bourgoyne, of Colorado, agreed. Losing drilling mud is called losing circulation, he said.

“When that happens, you can lose control of the well,” he said. “They have to watch out for that.”

But BP officials are confident relief wells will work.

“We are taking precautions, and we are taking our time,” Wells has said.

Each step the company takes dealing with the out-of-control well, Wells said, is painstakingly planned in advance.

The relief well is no different, he said.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/96740619.html?showAll=y&c=y


Will someone expert in the field please explain why the relief well has to be drilled to intersect with the original well at a depth of 15,000 feet or so below the seabed rather than at a much shallower depth? Could not the flow be blocked with mud followed by cement delivered at, say, 2-or-3,000 feet, which would save lots of time and expense? I suspect the reason has to do with pressure, but isn't the pressure much greater in the deeper strata, thus actually harder to counter? No one ever explains the need to go so deep to plug the first well.


anonymous...it probably has something to do with the angle that the drill head has to be to intersect the original drilled hole. If you look at a diagram that shows the original well head and the two relieve wells you can kind of see why they have to go that deep because the relieve wells are almost vertical when they intersect the original hole. It is probably easier to bend the pipe at that distance that closer to the surface of the seabed.


At the present time, most of the industry guru's feel that the inflow into the wellbore is coming from "between" the 7" 32# pipe at the bottom and the next string of pipe - the 9-7/8" liner shoe at 17,168'. Therefore, to be on the safe side, you have to set a string of pipe on the new well, just above this point at 17,168' and then drill into the area where the flow is occurring (Between 17,168' - 18,130'). At this point is where the sand face is at. They will then start by pumping heavy mud which will mix with the flow, going up the backside of the 7" X 9-7/8" annulus. The weight of the fluid and the friction will cause the well to "loadup" and then die (because it can not push up a heavy weighted column of drilling "kill weight mud". Then they will pump cement to do finish the kill. I hope this helps. "You have to go the end of the water hose to cut it off - not the open end."


More questions for someone in the know. Is it possible that BP has no interest in sealing this well, but will only employ tactics that will allow the well to return to a functioning one? 2nd Q: what if all fails? I've never read or heard how much oil is in this deposit, and what that will mean for our environment.


My feelings - that BP definitely wants to seal the first well. More than likely, the 9-7/8" X 7" long casing string has been compromised at the top. Suspect that it dropped and that the subsea hanger for the assembly was driven through the 21" bore on the BOP stack ( a reason for the BOP not closing). What engineers call a catastrophic failure - much like the explosion of the "O" ring on the Challenger Shuttle. Any BP engineer would want to stop this well and seal it off. Although bad decisions were made - no one saw the outcome of the "worst" case failure. This oil zone, as reported by BP, in bbls is "not" a significant find like some of the other fields in the GOM - but my guess is that the well will not stop until the relief well is drilled and deeper pumping operations begin.


I'm glad to see that there are some posters who know what they are talking about. I don't believe anything the media has to offer. It is great to hear unbiased, knowledgeable information from individuals who don't have an agenda to accommodate.

[Jolie Rouge]

Judge blocks Gulf offshore drilling moratorium
21 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The man in charge of a $20 billion fund to compensate people whose livelihoods have been ruined by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill headed back to the coast Tuesday to talk with officials about the claims process.

Kenneth Feinberg, tapped by the White House to run the fund, has pledged to speed payments to fishermen, business owners and others who have lost money. He was to meet with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley in Mobile on Tuesday afternoon.

BP PLC claims director Darryl Willis vistied a claims center in a rundown strip mall in Bayou La Batre, Ala., on Tuesday and said the company has already cut 37,000 checks for $118 million. Claims totaling about $600 million have been filed so far.

"Anyone who feels like they have been damaged or hurt or harmed has every right to file a claim," Willis said. "These are complicated in some cases, and in some cases they're straightforward. But every person should file their claim, and they will be looked at fairly."

Shares of the British oil giant plummeted to their lowest level in 13 years Tuesday as chief executive Tony Hayward started handing over control of the cleanup to the company's managing director. Stocks in BP traded as low as $4.95 (333 pence) in London, the weakest since February 1997.

BP PLC said this week it has spent $2 billion fighting the spill, with no end in sight. It's likely to be at least August before crews finish two relief wells that are the best chance of stopping the oil. Scientists estimate the blown-out well has gushed anywhere from 67 million to 127 millions gallons of oil into the Gulf.

In the meantime, a containment device is sucking up some of the oil gushing from the well. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Tuesday that it had collected nearly 1.1 million gallons in 24 hours, a new record.

No one knows exactly how much oil is spilling, but BP hopes to contain as much as 90 percent of it over the next few weeks. The current worst-case estimate is about 2.5 million gallons a day.

Some of the oil being captured will be brought to shore, refined and sold, and BP said it will donate the proceeds to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Allen also said government and industry leaders are exploring whether pipelines could be extended from the leaking well to several production platforms elsewhere in the Gulf where the flow could be captured or sent down to a different reservoir.

The idea emerged during a meeting in Washington last week and is still in the early stages. If it works, the option would allow oil to be contained even if the surface ships now siphoning it from the leaking well need to flee a hurricane.

BP was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig from Transocean Ltd. when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. President Barack Obama's administration responded by imposing a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

No new permits are being approved and drilling at 33 exploratory wells has been suspended.

Transocean president Steve Newman sharply criticized the ban at an oil industry conference in London on Tuesday. Hayward skipped the gathering to focus on the spill response after he was slammed for taking a break over the weekend to attend a yacht race in England.

Newman told reporters that there were things the Obama administration "could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit."

Federal Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans is considering whether to lift the moratorium and said he will decide by Wednesday.

Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, La., claims in a lawsuit that the government arbitrarily imposed the moratorium without any proof that the operations posed a threat. Hornbeck, which ferries people and supplies to offshore rigs, says it could cost Louisiana thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost wages.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," plaintiffs attorney Carl Rosenblum said during a two-hour hearing Monday.

Government lawyers said the Interior Department has demonstrated industry regulators need more time to study the risks of deepwater drilling and identify ways to make it safer.

"The safeguards and regulations in place on April 20 did not create a sufficient margin of safety," said Justice Department attorney Guillermo Montero.

Feldman asked a government lawyer why the Interior Department decided to suspend deepwater drilling after the rig explosion when it didn't bar oil tankers from Alaskan waters after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 or take similar actions in the wake of other industrial accidents.

"The Deepwater Horizon blowout was a game-changer," Montero said. "It really illustrates the risks that are inherent in deepwater drilling."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100622/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Judge blocks Gulf offshore drilling moratorium

White House says it will appeal the injunction. Headed to 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Hill has quotes from WH spokesman Robert Gibbs. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/104757-administration-vows-immediate-appeal-of-decision-lifting-drilling-ban

You can read the decision here http://bit.ly/dzqTse

Judge Feldman homes in on blatant lies incorporated into Deepwater report by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. His head should roll:


In the Executive Summary to the Report, the Secretary [Salazar] recommends “a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs.” He also recommends “an immediate halt to drilling operations on the 33 permitted wells, not including relief wells currently being drilled by BP, that are currently being drilled using floating rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Much to the government’s discomfort and this Court’s uneasiness, the Summary also states that “the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading. The experts charge it was a “misrepresentation.” It was factually incorrect. Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they “do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium” on floating drilling.

Takeaway from decision: “After reviewing the Secretary’s Report, the Moratorium Memorandum, and the Notice to Lessees, the Court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium. The Report, invoked by the Secretary, describes the offshore oil industry in the Gulf and offers many compelling recommendations to improve safety. But it offers no time line for implementation, though many of the proposed changes are represented to be implemented immediately. The Report patently lacks any analysis of the asserted fear of threat of irreparable injury or safety hazards posed by the thirty-three permitted rigs also reached by the moratorium.”

[Jolie Rouge]

BP puts Bob Dudley in key Gulf clean-up role
By Robert Barr, Associated Press Writer 37 mins ago

LONDON – BP put Mississippi native Bob Dudley in charge of handling the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Wednesday, an effort to clean up its image and take the spotlight off chief executive Tony Hayward, the Englishman whose gaffes have infuriated Americans.

BP PLC confirmed that Dudley, who grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss., an easy drive from the coast, is now the point man in the mission to stop the oil gusher and deal with the economic damage it has caused.

Dudley, who had led BP's operations in the Americas and Asia, is no stranger to tough situations, having protected his company's interests in rough dealing in Russia even after he was barred from the country.

The 54-year-old spent two decades climbing the ranks at Amoco Corp., which merged with BP, and lost out to Hayward on the CEO's slot three years ago.

Perhaps most importantly, he is a fresh face for the oil company as it attempts to fix the spill and protect its future. Hayward shocked Gulf residents last month when he said "I'd like my life back" and weeks later went yachting.

Dudley was appointed president and chief executive of the newly created Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, effective immediately, and will report to Hayward.

"In the near term, my focus will be on listening to stakeholders, so we can address concerns and remove obstacles that get in the way of our effectiveness. And we'll build an organization that over the longer term fulfills BP's commitments to the restore the livelihoods and the environment of the Gulf Coast," Dudley said.

The reorganization followed a series of humiliations in recent days for BP. Last week it bowed to President Barack Obama's demand that it set up a $20 billion escrow fund to cover damages and to suspend dividend payments, followed a day later by a public thrashing for Hayward before a Congressional committee.

Hayward repeatedly apologized and expressed sorrow for the oil leak caused by a fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. Eleven workers on the rig died.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee were infuriated when Hayward denied direct responsibility for operational decisions which may have led to the disaster.

"You're really insulting our intelligence," Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York, said at Thursday's hearing. "I am thoroughly disgusted."

Hayward had a further public relations gaffe over the weekend when he was photographed at a yacht race, and on Tuesday he ducked out of a previously announced commitment to speak at an oil industry conference in London.

A defining moment in BP's response to the disaster came on May 30 with Hayward's unguarded remark that "There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I'd like my life back."

Prime Minister David Cameron intends to press Obama this weekend at the G8 summit for more clarity on the ultimate financial cost that BP will face, the British leader's office said.

Cameron told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the company is prepared to meet its obligations to fund the clean up and compensate those whose businesses have been blighted by the spill.

"But we do want to make sure that this remains a strong and stable company, for our benefit but also for the benefit of the United States," Cameron said.

BP said the newly formed organization will manage all aspects of the response to the Deepwater Horizon incident and the oil and gas spill in the Gulf of Mexico. That includes clean-up operations, coordinating with the U.S. government and local officials, and managing the $20 billion escrow account.

"Having grown up in Mississippi, Bob has a deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast, and believes deeply in BP's commitment to restore the region," Hayward said.

"Our commitment to the Gulf States is for the long-term. And that requires a more permanent sustainable organization to see it through," Hayward added.

BP had said on Tuesday that Dudley would be taking the lead in the United States while Hayward retreated to his chief executive role.

Dudley's oil industry career began in 1979 with Amoco, which merged with BP in 1998.

Between 1994 and 1997 Dudley was based in Moscow, working on developing Amoco's business in Russia. From 2003 to 2008, he was president and chief executive of TNK-BP, a joint venture in Russia with a consortium of billionaires.

In that job, he steered the firm through a series of politically explosive disputes that saw one employee charged with espionage, the company's offices raided by Russian intelligence, an investor boycott and a barrage of tax and labor investigations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_bp/print;_ylt=Apy3RQbs2gyZbuVyrHw35iKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Far from Gulf, a cloudy picture for oil fund czar
By Ray Henry, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 23, 5:48 am ET

NEW ORLEANS – Is a strip club that caters to oil-rig workers entitled to a piece of the $20 billion fund for victims of the Gulf of Mexico disaster? How about a souvenir stand on a nearly empty beach? Or a far-off restaurant that normally serves Gulf seafood?

The farther the massive spill's effects spread, the harder it will get for President Barack Obama's new compensation czar to decide who deserves to be paid.

Fishermen, rig workers and others left jobless by the oil spill seem certain to get their slices of the pie, sooner or later. It's the people and businesses a few degrees — and perhaps hundreds of miles — removed from the Gulf but still dependent on its bounty who will have a tougher time getting their claims past Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who handled payouts for families of Sept. 11 victims. "How can there not be a trickle-down effect?" said Jeffrey Berniard, a New Orleans lawyer who represents about 100 people and firms filing claims against BP PLC. "How can the businesses that serve all the people who work in the industry not be affected if all the people in these industries are out of work?"

The question of who gets paid also gets trickier with time. As the spill enters its third month, Berniard and other attorneys say they're hearing more from people who might not have been affected right away.

One of Berniard's clients is a health care consultant who makes her living matching doctors with hospitals looking to hire medical help. She usually places about a dozen doctors in a good year, he said, so one contract is a big loss.

The woman had a doctor lined up recently for a job at Florida Panhandle hospital. "All of a sudden, the oil spill hits and the doctor says, 'I don't want to spend the next 10 or 15 years there,'" Berniard said. "I'm not overly optimistic her claim will be paid through the claims process. I think we'll have to go into litigation. But we'll see."

Charles Lavis Jr., another New Orleans lawyer, said he's fielded several inquiries from people worried the value of their recreational boats could drop if they are driven through an oil slick or if fewer people are interested in buying them because they don't want to cruise along an oil-spattered coast.

There has been so much confusion over who is eligible that Feinberg has had to respond to rumors about a New Orleans strip club putting in for a payout. "I'm dubious about that claim. I'm very dubious about that claim," Feinberg told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "But I don't want to prejudge any individual claim."

The business, called Mimosa Dancing Club, turns out to be a modest bar with a small dance floor in a Vietnamese enclave on the east side of the city, at least an hour from any oiled waters. The owner did not return messages seeking comment. A woman who identified herself as the owner's sister, but would only give her first name, said the establishment was not a strip club and said she did not know whether the owner had filed an oil spill claim.

BP spokesman John Curry said the company does not comment on individual claims.

Under pressure from the White House, the company will pay $20 billion into a compensation fund that will be administered by Feinberg. Curry said the company has not rejected any of the more than 67,000 claims it has received, although it has asked thousands of people for more documentation before cutting a check.

That could be a problem for many of those who need money most urgently, said Tuan Nguyen, deputy director of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corp. in eastern New Orleans, where many immigrants and their families work in the seafood business. "It's a very cash-involved industry. Some of the boat captains or boat owners, they sell fish on the side of the road or directly to families. They don't have records of that," Nguyen said.

Feinberg said that when drawing the line, he probably will try to determine if the law in the state where the claim is filed would recognize it if it were filed in court, a process he used in determining who had a legitimate claim to the 9/11 victims fund. He expects to use slightly different methods when fielding claims from different categories of businesses, say, fishermen versus hotels. "We have to decide in this facility how far removed from the Gulf we will find legitimate, valid claims," Feinberg said Tuesday at an appearance alongside Alabama Gov. Bob Riley in Mobile. "The buck stops with me in terms of an initial determination," Feinberg said, but the claimant can appeal to a panel of three retired judges, who will be appointed by him from the Gulf states. Those judges will rule in about 10 days, and claims applicants can sue in state court if they aren't satisfied.

BP can only appeal Feinberg's decisions on awards larger than $500,000, BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

The spill's financial waves start at the water's edge and spread inland.

In Pensacola, Fla., a linen cleaning firm that normally cleans sheets for hotels and condominiums rented to vacationers has lost $50,000 since the oil spill began, said Carol Moore, an investigator for a law firm representing the company.

A vending company whose machines supply candy bars, potato chips and prepackaged sandwiches has seen business drop by $25,000. About a dozen banks in the area are filing claims as customers who took out loans to fund condominiums and bait-and-tackle shops struggle to make payments, Moore said. "It is so huge that you wonder if $20 billion is going to be enough," she said.

Near Chapel Hill, N.C., Gary Huey said he typically goes through two dozen, 125-count boxes of raw oysters and another 12 gallons of shelled oysters a week at Huey's Restaurant and Oyster Bar. His Mississippi-based supplier has been able to keep him stocked so far, but has told Huey he will have to cut him off in two weeks. "In this area there are not many oyster bars, it is my niche so to speak," Huey said. "Or it was."

Since the spill started, the price of Gulf shrimp also has gone up and it has become harder to come by since many distributors are limiting how much they will sell, he said. Huey nonetheless is not sure whether he will file a claim with BP. "They could get in a situation that every restaurant that serves a little bit of seafood would be filing a claim, and I don't know where it stops at," he said. "I'm a fairly decent-sized restaurant, and seafood is our business, but I don't see how every restaurant could qualify."

While the prospect of lawsuits awaits, some who are missing out simply want to stay afloat.

Emma Chighizola, 68, is used to seeing dozens of tourists pouring through her doors at Blue Water Souvenirs in Grand Isle, snapping up T-shirts, rafts, shell jewelry and coolers. She and her husband filed a business claim with BP more than a month ago and "haven't gotten a penny."

Her husband went to a BP claims office over the weekend and was told the paperwork was still being processed. "How much time do they need?" she wondered. "All I want is what I'm losing, I don't want any more."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_claims/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--



In other news ....

BP BANKRUPT SOON?: The Atlantic's Derek Thompson spoke today with the president of an investment bank about what the banker calls the "reasonably high" chance that BP will file for bankruptcy at some point in order to limit its exposure to liabilities and other penalties. The banker called this outcome "an absolute horror" for the U.S. government. His solution for now? We need to stop treating the company like a pinata and give it space to find short-term capital to pay economic damages to the Gulf economy. More on The Atlantic Business Channel tomorrow.

[Jolie Rouge]

The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico
Published: 06/23/10 at 8:59 AM

http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/23/the-federal-government-is-shutting-down-the-dredging-that-was-being-done-to-create-protective-sand-berms-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/

Wait, what?

That’s what WDSU-TV in New Orleans is saying: http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html


The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.


You read that right. Here it is again:

The federal government is shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico.

And why is the federal government shutting down the dredging that was being done to create protective sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico?

Because they want to move it two miles farther off the coastline. According to Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, this will take at least a week.

Meanwhile:

http://dc-cdn.virtacore.com/Obama-Golf-300x198.jpg

http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/20/white-house-hits-bp-ceo-for-yacht-trip-while-obama-golfs/


Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Feds order stop to sand barrier dredging

I'm not saying that the Obama administration is punting on the oil spill on purpose (though I've heard some rumblings to that effect among the citizenry http://www.punditandpundette.com/2010/06/obama-to-kyl-if-we-secure-border-gop.html?showComment=1277238433939#c51936227179131 09752 ). But if they were, what would they be doing differently?

The feds have ordered a stop to sand barrier construction: http://soitgoesinshreveport.blogspot.com/2010/06/feds-latest-attempt-to-kill-louisiana.html


The federal government's latest effort to shut down Louisiana's effort to protect the coast is to halt sand berm dredging near the Chandeleur barrier islands.

The feds are requesting that the dredging operation be moved two miles further offshore.

Yes, they have reasons I'm not competent to evaluate. But common sense tells me that if the house is on fire, you get out the fire hose and worry about water damage later. Pat Austin has the details. http://soitgoesinshreveport.blogspot.com/2010/06/feds-latest-attempt-to-kill-louisiana.html


http://www.punditandpundette.com/2010/06/feds-order-stop-to-sand-barrier.html



For the love of God it's saaand! Jeeez.. http://truthandcommonsense.com/2010/06/23/again-we-see-what-happens-when-the-government-is-too-big-and-leaderless/



So is Obama actually TRYING to provoke a shooting civil war? because that is certainly the gut reaction I'm getting.

[Jolie Rouge]

More oil gushing into Gulf after problem with cap
1 hr 19 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.

Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_containment_cap/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--


I believe the administration is stalling clean-up of the Gulf oil spill in order to keep Big Oil in the spotlight as Evil-Capitalist-Destroyer-of-Planets until they can pass regulation of fossil fuels, slap HUGE taxes on energy usage, AND regulate CO2 as well.

All those new fees and taxes and carbon offsets that "energy regulation" would bring will make the AGW-ers --including Obama & his cronies (who have an interest in CCX), and Franklin Raines (who holds the patent on a residential carbon-trade scheme)-- hugely, impossibly rich. Multi-hundred-millionaires. And all the additional costs passed on to businesses and individuals would just about kill America's economy (goodbye "green shoots" of recovery). Remember Obama's words "Energy costs would necessarily skyrocket"? That's the goal here. "Nice little Gulf Coast ya got here. Ya wants the oil-spill cleaned up? I've got this American Power Act, see. If it gets passed, we can take care of your oily beaches and gooey birds, and let you go back to fishing. Do we gots a deal?"

I also believe Kyl told the truth: that the administration is holding border security hostage in order to pass some kind of amnesty.

[Jolie Rouge]

Cap again collecting oil from Gulf of Mexico leak
By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer 45 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Oil had spewed uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico for much of the day Wednesday before engineers reattached a cap being used to contain the gusher and direct some of the crude to a surface ship.

The logistics coordinator onboard the Discoverer Enterpriser, the ship that has been siphoning the oil, told The Associated Press that after more than 10 hours, the system was again collecting the crude. The crewmember, speaking from the bridge of the ship, said the cap was placed back on the gusher around 8 p.m. CDT. He asked not to be identified by name because he was not authorized to provide the information.

BP later confirmed the cap was back in place, but said it had been hooked up about an hour and half earlier. The coordinator said it would take a little time for the system to "get ramped back up."

Most recently, the system, which has been in place since June 4, was sucking up about 29,000 gallons an hour, crude that spewed back into the Gulf on Wednesday unabated. At that rate, it could mean about 290,000 extra gallons escaped into the water before the system restarted. Another ship was still collecting a smaller amount of oil and burning it on the surface.

BP engineers removed the cap after the mishap because fluid seemed to be leaking, creating a possible safety hazard because of the flames above, and they were concerned ice-like crystals might clog it.

The latest problem with the nine-week effort to stop the gusher came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration sought to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

In court papers, the Justice Department said it has asked a judge to delay a court ruling by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans that overturned the moratorium. The Interior Department imposed it last month after the disaster, halting approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspending drilling on 33 exploratory wells.

Under the worst-case scenario, as much as 104,000 gallons an hour — 2.5 million gallons a day — is flowing from the site where the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.

Bob Dudley, the BP managing director who took over the spill response from his company's embattled CEO Wednesday, had said earlier that engineers expected to replace the cap in less than a day. "It's a disruption, and the crew again did exactly the right thing because they were concerned about safety," he said. "It's a setback, and now we will go back into operation and show how this technology can work."

When the robot bumped into the equipment just before 10 a.m., gas rose through a vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the machinery, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.

Crews were checking to see if the crystals called hydrates had formed before attempting to put the cap back on.

Ed Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental science at Louisiana State University, said he suspects crews are pumping air into the line to flush out any water before they try to reattach the cap. "It sounds pretty easy and straightforward, but nothing is easy and straightforward when you're doing it remotely from a mile away," he said.

In May, a similar problem doomed the effort to put a bigger containment device over the blown-out well. BP had to abandon the four-story box after the crystals clogged it, threatening to make it float away.

The smaller cap had worked until now. To get it to the seafloor, though, crews had to slice away a section of the leaking pipe, meaning the flow of oil could be stronger now than before.

Meanwhile, pools of oil washed up along miles of national park and Pensacola Beach shoreline and health advisories against swimming and fishing in the once-pristine waters were extended for 33 miles east from the Alabama border. "It's pretty ugly, there's no question about it," Gov. Charlie Crist said.

The oil had a chemical stench as it baked in the afternoon heat. The beach looked as if it had been paved with a 6-foot-wide ribbon of asphalt, much different from the tar balls that washed up two weeks earlier. "This used to be a place where you could come and forget about all your cares in the world," said Nancy Berry, who fought back tears as she watched her two grandsons play in the sand far from the shore.

Park rangers in the Gulf Islands National Seashore helped to rescue an oily young dolphin found beached in the sand.

Ranger Bobbie Visnovske said a family found the dolphin Wednesday, and wildlife officers carried it into shallow water for immediate resuscitation. They later transported it to a rehabilitation center in Panama City, about 100 miles to the east.

The Obama administration was plotting its next steps Wednesday on the drilling halt. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement that within the next few days he would issue a new order imposing a moratorium that eliminates any doubt it is needed and appropriate. "It's important that we don't move forward with new drilling until we know it can be done in a safe way," he told a Senate subcommittee.

Attorneys for the oilfield services companies that sued over the moratorium filed court papers accusing the Obama administration of ignoring Feldman's decision. They said Salazar's comments about a new moratorium have had a chilling effect on the resumption of drilling.

Several companies, including Shell and Marathon Oil, said they would await the outcome of any appeals before they start drilling again.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=ArNOWj3wojUjLPtWWmBvIYKp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

It is not a cap if they're collecting oil from it. It shows BP's true intent and interest.

---

There are multiple issues in play here.

1) Someone with BP made a huge mistake that caused the explosion (unless, quite possibly, it was sabotage). Since we have little hope of salvaging the Deepwater Horizon, I don't forsee any sabotage determination being made.
2) BP will shouldeer the burden of this mess.
3) Obama and his minions are going to make Billions because of this.
What you say?
Well, Obama and his minions are pushing Cap and Trade not because it will do anything for the environment (it has not reduced carbon emission anywhere it has been implemented that I have found. Rather, it has simply created a market for a select group of people to scam billions in profits.) Well, now that I think about it, I do believe there was one country where emissions actually declined something like .25 percent the first year of implementation then continued to rise anyway.
4) Obama, and his indirect financier intend to double their money on this one bet. They are heavily invested in Petrobras. Our government loaned petrobras $2 billion last year and George Soros invested $900 million in this company. They are preparing to drill a well at over 14,000 feet deep. If we are so angry at what is happening at a mere 5,000 feet, why are we financing the drilling of a well at over 14,000 feet? I fully believe our administration has given little more than face time to this accident because they
1) want the residents of all affected states to become much more dependent on the federal government for their well being.
2) want to shut down all private oil companies from drilling in the gulf,. and then,
3) install Petrobras as the only company for our offshore oil development. In the process they rape us for everything we have and smile all the way to the bank for our collective stupidity.

----

People are going to realize at some point there is more oil leaking from this one screwed up hole than all the OPEC nations together produce in a day. Remember there are over 2500 of these wells in just the gulf area alone, and then, did someone say there is an oil shortage?? Thats alot of bull@#$%.. Next time they drill a well they need to use 2 or 3 inch pipe instead of 22 inches so if it breaks there will be a controllable amount of oil leaking from it since they don't need to pump a MILLION gallons a day from any one well..

Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing state in OPEC and they produce just over 8,000 barrels a day. Compare that to the amount of oil leaking from this ONE well.

[Jolie Rouge]

NOAA reopens 8000 square miles of Gulf to fishing

Jun 23, 2010 - UPDATED: 4:55 p.m.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NOAA has opened more than 8,000 square miles of previously closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico because no oil has been observed there.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday said the most significant opening is an area south of Mississippi, which was closed Monday. Smaller areas also were opened off the Louisiana and central Florida coasts.

Officials say the waters initially were closed as a precaution to ensure that seafood taken from them would remain safe for consumers. It had been projected that oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon rig accident would be in the areas over the next few days. However, NOAA says a review of satellite images, radar and aerial data indicates that oil has not moved into those areas.

According to NOAA, the now closed area covers 78,597 square miles, about 32.5 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters. That leaves more than two-thirds of the Gulf’s federal waters available for fishing.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/97015914.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Latest blunder feeds frustration in the Gulf
By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer 11 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Earlier this month, BP boldly predicted the oil gushing from the bottom of the sea would be reduced to a "relative trickle" within days, and President Barack Obama told the nation last week that as much as 90 percent would soon be captured. But those goals seemed wildly optimistic Thursday after yet another setback a mile underwater.

A deep-sea robot bumped into the cap collecting oil from the well, forcing a temporary halt Wednesday to the company's best effort yet to contain the leak. The cap was back in place Thursday, but frustration and skepticism were running high along the Gulf Coast.

BP's pronouncements have "absolutely no credibility," Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young said. The latest problem shows "they really are not up to the task and we have more bad news than we have good news."

Even before the latest setback, the government's worst-case estimates suggested the cap and other equipment were capturing less than half of the oil leaking from the sea floor. And in recent days, the "spillcam" video continued to show gas and oil billowing from the blown-out well.

BP spokesman John Curry laid out in new detail the company's plans to have additional ships in place that can capture even more oil, and said he understands the frustration. "We want to do what everybody wants and that's of course to minimize the impact as quickly and efficiently as possible and without injury to any of the workers," he said.

In other developments:

• The spill began arriving in sheets of oil on the Florida coast, forcing the first closing of a beach in the state since the accident more than nine weeks ago, and fouled some of Mississippi's most fertile coastal waters.

• The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf refused to stay his ruling while the government appeals.

• Environmental groups asked the court to release additional information about U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman's holdings in oil-related stocks.

At nearly every important juncture since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers, the government's and BP's estimates on the size of the spill, its effect on wildlife and the time frame for containing it have spectacularly missed the mark.

On June 8, BP chief operating office Doug Suttles said the spill should be reduced to a "relative trickle" in less than a week. BP later said it would take more time for the spill to reach a trickle.

Obama used the 90 percent figure last week in his first address from the Oval Office and after meeting with BP officials at the White House, saying the company had informed him that was how much of the oil could be kept out of the water within weeks. "It just doesn't look like that's in the cards," said Ed Overton, a retired professor of environmental science at Louisiana State University. "We're not even close to that, and the word today is that they were capturing less than the day before. I was hoping the president knew something that the rest of us didn't know. I mean, he was taking to the big shots."

BP said Thursday it was gradually ramping back up to capture about 700,000 gallons a day with the cap, and burning off an additional 438,000 a day using an incinerator ship. Worst-case government estimates are that about 2.5 million gallons are leaking from the well, though no one really knows for sure.

By mid- to late July, the company hopes to have the capacity to capture up to 3.3 million gallons a day, if that much is flowing, Curry said.

It cannot all be done immediately, Curry said, because the logistics of positioning four giant ships capable of collecting oil and connecting them to the seafloor are complicated. "There's a limit to the number of ships in the world that do these type of things," he said.

None of those efforts is expected to stop the leak entirely. The soonest that would happen is August, which is when BP says relief wells being drilled through thousands of feet of rock beneath the seabed will reach the gusher.

That seemed a long way off to many.

In Florida, officials closed a quarter-mile stretch of Pensacola Beach not far from the Alabama line when thick pools of oil washed up, the first time a beach in the state has been closed because of the spill.

Lifeguard Collin Cobia wore a red handkerchief over his nose and mouth to block the oil smell. "It's enough to knock you down," he said.

In Mississippi, which has so far been largely spared from the spill, a large patch of oil oozed into Mississippi Sound, the fertile waters between the state's barrier islands and its mainland.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill/print;_ylt=Ajxlf24pdT6h2a2Z49LHx56p_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

BP spoof video is runaway hit for UCB website
By Jake Coyle, Ap Entertainment Writer Thu Jun 24, 1:50 pm ET

NEW YORK – The most memorable comedic take on the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico hasn't come from "Saturday Night Live," "The Daily Show" or a late-night monologue.

Instead, a cheaply made video by an unlikely New York improv troupe has created the only commentary that has truly resonated online: a three-minute spoof that shows BP executives pathetically trying to clean up a coffee spill.

In the video, BP execs are in the middle of a meeting when someone overturns a coffee cup. The liquid oozes across the conference table. One exec says it will "destroy all the fish" (his sushi lunch); another says it's encroaching on his map of Louisiana. They try to contain the coffee spill by wrapping their arms around the perimeter, dumping garbage on top to absorb the liquid, clipping hair over it and other stupid human tricks.

Three hours later, the spill remains with all the mess left from attempts to contain it: paper, hair, soil, plants, etc. Finally, they get Kevin Costner on the phone.

"He'll know what to do for sure," an exec says with great hope.

"Do you have a golf ball?" Costner asks. No. A pingpong ball? Yes. Costner tells them to throw it at the spill. They do. Nothing happens. Then: 47 days later. The spill and the mess are still there with BP execs no closer to a solution.

In the last two weeks, the video has been watched by nearly 7 million people on YouTube. By the count of Viral Video Chart, it's been shared some 300,000 times on blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.

The video was dreamed up by the writers for the sketch show "Beneath Gristedes," a monthly stage show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York. While meeting to work on the show, a germ of the concept came to Erik Tanouye, who worked out the script with fellow writers John Frusciante, Gavin Spieller and Eric Scott.

They shot it two days later and within a week, it was up on UCBComedy.com. The site has had some viral hits — a parody of a Google ad, a spoof of the "David After the Dentist" video — but nothing on this level. UCBComedy.com's servers immediately crashed under the traffic.

"I couldn't do my day job," said Tanouye, 32, who is the director of student affairs for the UCB training center.

It's been the biggest hit yet for UCBComedy.com, which was founded in 2007 to give its performers an online outlet. The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, which has popular theaters in New York and Los Angeles, was co-founded by Amy Poehler.

For more than a decade, it has regularly churned out exciting young comic talent, including "SNL" players Bobby Moynihan and Jenny Slate, and "Office" regular Zach Woods. Young audiences line up on a nightly basis to pack the 300-seat New York theater, which has a youthful, collegiate vibe.

"What we're trying to do with videos is get out there to the general public the talent that we have," says Todd Bieber, 30, the website's director of content and production. "We can reach New York and L.A. audiences pretty easily, but there's a whole world out there that we can't reach through the theaters."

The boost in visitors to the site has been considerable. From May 21-June 21 last year, the site drew just under 43,000; the same period this year has attracted more than 450,000.

But Bieber, who formerly worked at the Onion News Network, is the only one being paid to work full time on the site. Videos don't have anything like the budgets of the Onion News Network, which shoots in the style of real news broadcasts.

UCBComedy.com includes a lot of footage of improv performances, which typically have much more energy in person, where the thrill of instant creation is immediate. But the dozens of UCB performers — who are graduates of the theater's improv training classes — have learned to fashion their comedy to the Web.

"Beta teams" — performers dedicated to producing content for the site — were formed in January. Original series have been created, including one called "Blackouts," which are short 30-second bites, one punch line at a time.

Bieber says that a viral sensation such as "BP Spills Coffee" can "energize the UCB community" in creating video for the website. Having so much talent at the ready makes UCBComedy.com a little like an amateur version of FunnyOrDie.com, the comedy site co-founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, which pulls contributions from famous comedians.

"That's the hope," says Bieber. "There are so many terribly ridiculous things going on in the world that there's plenty of room for commentary. If we can be looked in the same way as FunnyOrDie, that would be terrific. We'd love to get the hits that they do."

There's plenty of competition when it comes to topical humor, though, and the oil spill has been a common topic. The slow-motion horror of the spill is utterly serious, but people have long turned to comics to give voice to rage. BP, which is said to have mismanaged the spill, has been an easy target.

David Letterman, Jay Leno and other late-night hosts have made BP jokes practically a nightly feature. Conan O'Brien, perhaps feeling like he was missing out, recently tweeted: "The past 2 months I've been on tour and haven't followed the news. What's with all the photos of chocolate pelicans?"

"The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" have battered the subject relentlessly. Mixing comedy with activism, Colbert Nation has launched a "Gulf of America Fund" to raise donations for the recovery efforts. "SNL" is off for the summer and so has missed the opportunity to lampoon BP.

One of the more interesting Internet-based parodies has been a mock Twitter feed, purporting to be from BP's public relations department: http://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR. It has more than 175,000 followers. One example: "Investing a lot of time & money into cleaning up our image, but the beaches are next on the to-do list for sure."

But the success of the UCB's video could well be a firm foothold in the world of online comedy, and boost the troupe's national presence.

"People can see these amazing talents come up," says Bieber. "As awesome as the theater is, at the end of the day, that sketch would have killed for 200 or 300 people, not 6 or 7 million."

___

Online: http://www.ucbcomedy.com/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_en_tv/us_oil_spill_online_hit/print;_ylt=Ajxlf24pdT6h2a2Z49LHx562GL8C;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Iowa museum aquarium exhibit highlights oil spill
By Melanie S. Welte, Associated Press Writer Wed Jun 23, 3:49 pm ET

DES MOINES, Iowa – A new exhibit at an aquarium in Iowa that had intended to showcase the beauty of the Gulf of Mexico will instead be void of life to underline the environmental impact of a massive oil spill in the ocean basin.

The 40,000-gallon aquarium at the National Mississippi River and Aquarium in Dubuque, about 1,000 miles from where the river dumps into the Gulf, was supposed to have been teeming with sharks, rays and other fish. Two smaller tanks were to show a seagrass bed and coral reef. "It may be the only time that people have ever seen a major aquarium that, instead of showing its fish, is showing an environmental disaster," said Jerry Enzler, the museum's executive director.

The main tank — the size of a school bus — will contain water and artificial coral, its sides adorned with window stickers that look like oil. "It will look like the oil is sinking down and about to cover the coral, which will kill the coral," Enzler said.

Anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil have spilled since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and blew out a well 5,000 feet underwater. BP PLC was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.

The Iowa exhibit, which opens Saturday as part of the museum's $40 million expansion, will feature a video showing the oil spill unfolding. "We want everyone to pause and consider the delicate balance of life in our oceans," Enzler said.

It will be a powerful message, said Steve Feldman, a spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, a nonprofit accrediting group based in Siver Springs, Md. "The upclose connection to animals is very powerful. It's part of how we teach our children about nature and in this case, man's impact on nature," Feldman said.

The Iowa museum reached out to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when it was considering the exhibit, said Louisa Koch, the education director for NOAA. "There have been many, many exhibits highlighting the impacts of hurricanes and tsunamis, but I think this is a really stunning way to go. The (disaster in the) Gulf is of unknown but certainly significant impact. I can think of no exhibit like this," she said.

The museum also displays a 92-foot map of the Mississippi River featuring a graphic of the oil spill that will grow as the disaster widens. "Many times people view aquariums as a beautiful picture, almost a screen saver, so to speak," Enzler said. "This is no screen saver."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20100623/ap_tr_ge/us_travel_brief_dead_gulf_aquarium/print;_ylt=Ajxlf24pdT6h2a2Z49LHx54YdL1_;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

the judge who overturned President Obama’s drilling moratorium is now receiving death threats (via @kjdrennen). Where’s the outrage?

[Jolie Rouge]

Costner cleanup device gets high marks from BP
31 minutes ago

It was treated as an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill's damage. But as Henry Fountain explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question — an oil-separating centrifuge — marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering 32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.

The "Waterworld" actor has invested some $26 million and spent the past 10 years in developing the centrifuges. He helped found a manufacturing company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, to advance his brother's research in spill cleanup technology. In testimony before Congress this month, Costner walked through the device's operation—explaining how it spins oil-contaminated water at a rapid speed, so as to separate out the oil and capture it in a containment tank:

The device can purportedly take in thousands of gallons of oil-tainted water and remove up to 99% of the oil from it. On Thursday, BP posted to its YouTube page a video of the news conference featuring Costner and BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announcing the news.

"Doug Suttles was the first guy to step up in the oil industry," Costner said at the presser, "and I'm really happy to say when he ordered 32 machines, it's a signal to the world, to the industry, where we need to be."

Suttles said the additional machines will be used to build four new deep-water systems: on two barges and two 280-foot supply boats.

"We tested it in some of the toughest environments we could find, and actually what it's done — it's quite robust," Suttles said. "This is real technology with real science behind it, and it's passed all of those tests." He added that Costner's device has proved effective at processing 128,000 barrels of water a day, which "can make a real difference to our spill response efforts."

In his congressional testimony, Costner recounted his struggle to effectively market the centrifuge. He explained that although the machines are quite effective, they can still leave trace amounts of oil in the treated water that exceeds current environmental regulations. Because of that regulatory hurdle, he said, he had great difficulty getting oil industry giants interested without first having the approval of the federal government.

It's true, as Fountain notes in the Times, that innovation on spill technology has been hobbled in part by the reach of federal regulation — though Fountain also notes that oil companies have elected to devote comparatively little money for researching cleanup devices in the intensely competitive industry.

Costner said that after the device was patented in 1993, he sought to overcome oil-company jitters by offering to allow U.S. oil concerns to use it on a trial basis. He'd extended the same offer to the Japanese government in 1997, he said, but got no takers there either.

— Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100625/ts_ynews/ynews_ts2851/print;_ylt=AqScOUrx8cDx96R80aaAM6wEq594;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Storm threatens to disrupt BP oil-siphoning
By Kristen Hays 2 hrs 40 mins ago

HOUSTON (Reuters) – With a storm threatening to disrupt oil-siphoning efforts at BP Plc's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well, the U.S. Coast Guard on Friday said collection efforts would be suspended five days before the forecast onset of gale-force winds.

A tropical disturbance over the western Caribbean could deal a big setback to efforts by BP to contain oil gushing from the well, estimated by the U.S. government at up to 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons/9.5 million liters) per day.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. government's point man on the oil spill, said it would be necessary five days before gale force winds are forecast to arrive to take down operations involving ships and other equipment siphoning some of the oil spewing from BP's ruptured deep-sea well.

During this period, the oil could flow unchecked from the ruptured well into the sea for up to 14 days, Allen said.

The U.S. National Weather Service defines gale force winds as 39 mph to 54 mph. When referring to gale force winds, Allen mentioned "about 40 knots," which is 46 mph. "Our threshold to begin taking action is 120 hours before gale force winds are forecasted," Allen said.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/overview_atl/atl_overview.gif

Two oil-capture systems siphon oil from the leak to a drillship and a service rig a mile above the well at the water's surface. Both use fixed pipes that require days to disconnect and allow the vessels to move out of the path of a storm, officials have said.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the tropical disturbance over the western Caribbean Sea continued to strengthen, and has a high 70 percent chance of developing into a tropical depression over the next two days.

Some forecast models predict it will go into the central or eastern Gulf of Mexico, where BP is struggling to plug the leak.

In other spill-related developments:

* BP said the first of two relief wells intended to permanently plug the leak had been drilled to 11,275 feet below the seabed, or less than 2,000 feet from the bottom of the leaking well.

BP would have to suspend any relief well drilling efforts about four days and eight hours before the forecast onset of gale-force winds, Allen said.

* BP said its siphoning systems collected or burned off 23,725 barrels of oil on Thursday. That's about 12 percent less than its record 27,100-barrel capture total on Tuesday. The containment cap system channeling oil to the drillship is continuing to ramp up after a 10-hour shutdown to fix a problem from Wednesday, BP said.

* Electromagnetic sensors placed in the relief well have detected the location of the blown-out well, but BP said it would need more precise readings from the sensors before boring into the ruptured well as part of the operation to plug it.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Sharks in oily water video gets national attention
Published: Friday, June 25, 2010, 1:18 PM
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/06/sharks_in_oily_water_video_vie.html

It has easily been the most-watched video ever put on al.com by the Press-Register, with 141,738 starts as of early this afternoon.


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A shark is seen moving through the water near the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge shoreline in this still image from a Press-Register video shot on June 18, 2010.


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A speckled crab is almost completely encased in a thick layer of oil just offshore of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Baldwin County, Ala. Discarded items, such as this American flag, are similarly encrusted with the thick, goopy oil found hugging the seafloor in several locations along the Gulf of Mexico beach.

Video footage shot on June 18 by Ben Raines of the Press-Register and uploaded the following day captured both oil in the water and a Gulf water teeming with sharks. The video closes with a view of a discarded American flag in the water, clotted with oil like the crab in front of it.

The video has been shown on ABC's "Good Morning America," CNN's Headline News and Fox News with Shepherd Smith. Raines has been interviewed on "Good Morning America" and other national news shows about his experience covering the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as both the Press-Register's environmental reporter and a Gulf Coast resident who spends much of his life on the water.

"I spend a lot of time in the Gulf, especially along the beaches," said Raines. "I commonly see sharks as I cruise the shoreline looking for cobia and other fish, but usually no more than five or 10 during the course of a day. Most of them are small sharks, typically blacktips or sharpnose sharks about 4 feet long. During the spring and fall migration periods for the sharks, I might see a few more than usual.

"Friday was a different story altogether. I was looking at 20 or more sharks at a time in shallow water, and most of them were more than 5 feet long. Several were 8 feet or larger. Instead of the small inshore species, I saw bull sharks, hammerheads and one large shark that I think might have weighed more than 400 pounds.

"The sharks were so numerous I was able to hold my camera over the side of the boat and film them as they swam within four or five feet of the lens. Whether they were driven toward shore by low oxygen in deeper water remains an open question. But, there were definitely an unusually high number of sharks swimming just off the beach."

The Dauphin Island Sea Lab measured large areas of low oxygen water just off the beach at Fort Morgan earlier this month, beginning in water around 20 feet deep. Monty Graham, a University of South Alabama scientist, theorized that the population of oil-consuming microbes had swelled, and those tiny animals consumed lots of oxygen.

Sea life begins to die if oxygen drops below two parts per million. Those levels may explain the dense aggregations of fish seen in the surf zone. The turbulent area near shore is naturally high in oxygen due to the influence of the breaking waves.

[Jolie Rouge]

Storm could be latest problem in spill cleanup
By Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press Writer 8 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – A tropical storm churning in the Caribbean could be the latest bad news for BP crews trying to contain and clean up the massive oil spill in the Gulf, an effort that has been plagued by setbacks for more than two months.

It is still too early to tell exactly where Tropical Storm Alex might go or how it might affect oil on and below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, forecasters said. If gale-force winds are predicted within five days, BP will begin moving the armada of ships working on the spill, including the rigs drilling two relief wells that are the best hope of stopping the oil. The wells are projected to be done by mid-August if bad weather doesn't interrupt the drilling.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Saturday that officials are watching Alex carefully even though the current forecast shows it churning toward Mexico and missing the northern Gulf Coast and the spill. "We know that these tracks can change and we're paying very close attention to it," he said.

BP says its effort to drill through 2 1/2 miles of rock to relieve pressure on the blown-out well is on target. Once the new well intersects the ruptured one, BP plans to pump in heavy drilling mud to stop the oil flow and plug the well with cement.

The crew that has been drilling one of the relief wells since early May ran a test to confirm it is on the right path, using a tool that detects the magnetic field around the casing of the original, blown-out well. "The layman's translation is, 'We are where we thought we were,'" said BP spokesman Bill Salvin.

The oil giant's stock tumbled to a 14-year low anyway Friday on news that BP has now spent around $2.35 billion dealing with the disaster. Somewhere between 69 million and 132 million gallons of crude have spewed into the water since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.

The company has lost more than $100 billion in market value since that day, and its stock is worth less than half the $60 or so it was selling for.

Tropical Storm Alex could create even more problems. The effort to capture the oil gushing from the sea bottom could be interrupted for up to two weeks if a storm forces BP to move its equipment out of harm's way, Allen said.

Salvin said BP would need about five days to move or secure equipment including ships that are processing the oil sucked up by the containment cap on the well and the rigs drilling the relief wells.

The company is working on a different containment system that would be easier to disconnect and hook back up if a storm interrupted the work.

BP is capturing anywhere from 840,000 to 1.2 million gallons of oil a day. Worst-case government estimates say 2.5 million gallons a day are leaking from the well, though no one really knows for sure.

In other news:

• A financial disclosure report released Friday shows that the Louisiana judge who struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf has sold many of his energy investments. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman still owns eight energy-related investments, including stock in Exxon Mobil Corp. Among the assets he sold was stock in Transocean, which owned the rig that exploded. The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court Friday to delay Feldman's ruling "to preserve the status quo" during the government's appeal.

• Labor Secretary Hilda Solis slammed BP — along with Massey Energy, owner of the West Virginia coal mine where 29 workers died in an explosion in April — saying they need better safety measures. "We are not saying go out of business," she said. "Do your job better. Make an investment in your employees. We want you to make a profit, but not at the expense of killing your employees."

• Vice President Joe Biden will head to the Gulf on Tuesday to visit a command center in New Orleans and the oil-fouled Florida Panhandle.

• The IRS said payments for lost wages from BP's $20 billion victims compensation fund are taxable just like regular income. Payments for physical injuries or property loss are generally tax-free.

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil giant BP picks up tab for Colorado fireworks
51 mins ago

DURANGO, Colo. – The fireworks display in the city of Durango will go on thanks to embattled oil giant BP. The company stepped forward to pay for the annual July Fourth display back in December, five months before the start of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The display typically costs $15,000 and city officials were poised to cancel it because of a budget crunch. But representatives of BP's office in southwestern Colorado surprised the council by announcing the company would pick up the tab.

Company spokesman Curtis Thomas says BP knows how important the celebration is to the community and didn't want it to be lost. He says BP hasn't asked for any advertising in exchange for its donation.

BP drills for natural gas in Colorado.

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Information from: Durango Herald, http://www.durangoherald.com

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[Jolie Rouge]

Oil spill's psychological toll quietly mounts
Janet Mcconnaughey And Mitch Stacy, Associated Press Writers – Sun Jun 27, 6:52 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS – The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster feels far worse to shrimper Ricky Robin than Katrina, even though he's still haunted by memories of riding out the hurricane on his trawler and of his father's suicide in the storm's aftermath.

The relentless spill is bringing back feelings that are far too familiar to Robin and others still dealing with the physical and emotional toll wrought by Katrina five years ago.

"I can't sleep at night. I find myself crying sometimes," said Robin, of Violet, a blue-collar community on the southeastern edge of the New Orleans suburbs, along the highway that hugs the levee on the Mississippi River's east bank nearly all the way to the Gulf.

Psychiatrists who treated people after Katrina and have held group sessions in oil spill-stricken areas say the symptoms showing up are much the same: Anger. Anxiety. Drinking. Depression. Suicidal thoughts.

"Everybody's acting strange," said Robin, 56. "Real angry, frustrated, stressed out, fighting brothers and sisters and mamas and family."

Fishing families, the backbone of the coastal economy, are especially hard-pressed as the waters that make up their livelihood are sporadically closed because of fears the oil will taint fish, oysters and shrimp.

Oil field workers, whose salaries are among the best the region can offer, worry about their industry's long-term future.

And there is still the rebuilding after Katrina, which in August 2005 devastated a swath from Louisiana to Alabama — almost as big as the area affected by the oil — killing more than 1,600 and forever changing the region's relationship with the water.

No one is fishing any more out of Zeke's Landing Marina in Orange Beach, Ala., though most charter boat captains are making some money pulling boom and doing other jobs in BP's cleanup program.

Looking at oil all day can be harder than staying home, said Joe Nash, a boat captain there. "Seeing everything that you've been used to for years kind of slowly going away from you, it's overwhelming," he said. "Because you can't do anything about it."

That helplessness, coupled with the uncertainty about what's going to happen with the spill and when the next check from BP PLC will arrive, leaves boat captain George Pfeiffer angry all the time.

"Our families want to know what's going on," said Pfeiffer, 55, who keeps two charter boats at Zeke's Landing. "When we get home, we're stressed out and tired, and they want answers and we don't have any."

His wife cries, a lot.

"I haven't slept. I've lost weight," said Yvonne Pfeiffer, 53. "My shoulders are in knots. The stress level has my shoulders up to my ears."

Social services agencies have not seen a significant increase in people seeking help since the spill began, but that doesn't mean the need isn't there, said Jeffrey Bennett, executive director of the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center in Gulfport, Miss., whose state saw oil wash up on the mainland for the first time Sunday.

"Unfortunately, the people most affected, shrimpers and fishermen, are not people who traditionally seek mental health services," Bennett said. "They're kind of tough characters, and look at being depressed or not being able to handle their own problems as weakness."

On Sunday evening, many in Alabama's coastal fishing community planned to attend services for a popular charter captain who committed suicide on his docked boat. Authorities had no way to know whether his death had anything to do with the spill, but they hoped it would move others to seek help.

John Ziegler, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Mental Health, said no one had walked into counseling centers set up in fishing communities since the disaster. Then on Friday, two days after the captain's death, five people came in saying they needed help because of the spill.

As news of the captain's death spread east to Pensacola, Fla., Baptist Health Care's Lakeview Center publicized its 24-hour help line, and several calls about the spill came in the following day.

"People saying they were sad, they were angry, they were grieving, they have lost a lot," marketing director Tish Pennewill said. "Grandmothers talking about how they took the children to the beach for the summer and could no longer do that. People wondering if it was ever going to be the same."

Even people whose livelihoods aren't affected by the spill find themselves crying on beaches, like Nancy Salinas, who was on Pensacola Beach last week when Florida officials closed it because oil was washing up. "It just breaks your heart," she said. "I can't get my feet in the water."

Mental health professionals say it is too early to have reliable data to understand the full severity of stress issues spawned by the spill.

However, their work so far indicates the problem is taking root, and the backdrop of Katrina means it is likely to get worse. Tropical systems such as the one that swirled over the Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday won't help matters, even though it was forecast to bypass the spill.

"This is a second round of major trauma for children and families still recovering from Katrina. It represents uncharted territory," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters who has worked with Katrina survivors.

Dr. Howard Osofsky, chair of the psychiatry department at LSU Health Sciences Center, said focus groups he's monitored in spill-affected areas confirmed those emotions.

Ziegler, the Alabama mental health chief, said counselors have gone out to marinas, docks and other places frequented by fishermen and others affected by the spill.

"They've had folks break down and weep," he said. "They've had people share some of their deepest feelings about their future and how they're feeling now that things seem imminent."

In Mississippi, Bennett's group is working with Catholic Social Services in Biloxi on a proposal to train people in fishing communities to work as "peer listeners" to try to identify people who might be having problems and encourage them to seek help.

The social and psychological toll on residents of the Gulf will last long after the oil is cleaned up, say veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

"Every day you're dealing with this thing," said John Calhoun, former mayor of Homer, whose community was devastated. "If you're not working on it, you're worrying about it. Frankly, they sold a lot of alcohol during this time. I saw some of the toughest guys I know break down in tears because the stress had gotten to them."

Michael Herz, who served on the commission that investigated Alaska's spill, visited the Gulf and said it was like seeing it all over again, only worse.

"It took away livelihoods and it split families," he said. "Some members of family took money from Exxon and others were so upset they didn't. The rate of mental health, spousal abuse, alcoholism all skyrocketed."

Robin, the Louisiana shrimper, fears the spill will have similar effects on himself and his neighbors.

"This is a slow-moving hurricane," he said. "You're looking at it, and you can't do nothing about it."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Volunteers ready but left out of spill cleanup
Tom Breen, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 32 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – BP and the Obama administration face mounting complaints that they are ignoring foreign offers of equipment and making little use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Coast Guard said there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted, with the vast majority still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department.

And in recent days and weeks, for reasons BP has never explained, many fishing boats hired for the cleanup have done a lot of waiting around.

A report prepared by investigators with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., detailed one case in which the Dutch government offered April 30 to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more than 6 million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the U.S. to approve the offer.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Thursday scorned the idea that "somehow it took the command 70 days to accept international help."

"That is a myth," he declared, "that has been debunked literally hundreds of times."

He said 24 foreign vessels were operating in the Gulf before this week. He did not specifically address the Dutch vessels.

The help is needed. Based on some government estimates, more than 140 million gallons of crude have now spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, eclipsing the 1979-80 disaster off Mexico that had long stood as the worst in the Gulf.

Still, more than 2,000 boats have signed up for oil-spill duty under BP's Vessel of Opportunity program. The company pays boat captains and their crews a flat fee based on the size of the vessel, ranging from $1,200 to $3,000 a day, plus a $200 fee for each crew member who works an eight-hour day.

Rocky Ditcharo, a shrimp dock owner in Buras, La., said many fishermen hired by BP have told him that they often park their boats on the shore while they wait for word on where to go.

"They just wait because there's no direction," Ditcharo said. He said he believes BP has hired many boat captains "to show numbers."

"But they're really not doing anything," he added. He also said he suspects the company is hiring out-of-work fishermen to placate them with paychecks.

Chris Mehlig, a fisherman from Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, said he is getting eight days of work a month, laying down containment boom, running supplies to other boats or simply being on call dockside in case he is needed.

"I wish I had more days than that, but that's the way things are," he said.

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, said BP and the Coast Guard provided a map of the exact locations of 140 skimmers that were supposedly cleaning up the oil. But he said that after he repeatedly asked to be flown over the area so he could see them at work, officials told him only 31 skimmers were on the job.

"I'm trying to work with these guys," he said. "But everything they're giving me is a wish list, not what's actually out there."

A BP spokesman declined to comment.

Newly retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the response effort, bristled at some of the accusations in Issa's report.

"I think we've been pretty transparent throughout this," Allen said at the White House. He disputed any suggestion that there aren't enough skimmers being put on the water, saying the spill area is so big that there are bound to be areas with no vessels.

The Coast Guard said there are roughly 550 skimmers working in the Gulf, with 250 or so in Louisiana waters, 136 in Florida, 87 in Alabama and 76 in Mississippi, although stormy weather in recent days has kept the many of the vessels from working.

The frustration extends to the volunteers who have offered to clean beaches and wetlands. More than 20,000 volunteers have signed up to help in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, yet fewer than one in six has received an assignment or the training required to take part in some chores, according to BP.

The executive director of the Alabama Coastal Foundation, Bethany Kraft, said many people who volunteered are frustrated and angry that no one has called on them for help.

"You see this unfolding before your eyes and you have this sense that you can't do anything," she said. "To watch this happen in our backyard and not be able to help is hard."

Some government estimates put the amount of oil spilled at 160 million gallons. That calculation was arrived at by using the rate of 2.5 million gallons a day all the way back to the oil rig explosion. The AP, relying on scientists who advised the government on flow rate, bases its estimates on a lower rate of 2.1 million gallons a day up until June 3, when a cut to the well pipe increased flow.

By either estimate, the disaster would eclipse the Ixtoc disaster in the Gulf two decades ago and rank as the biggest offshore oil spill during peacetime. The biggest spill in history happened in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, when Iraqi forces opened valves at a terminal and dumped about 336 million gallons of oil.

The total in the Gulf disaster is significant because BP is likely to be fined per gallon spilled. Also, scientists say an accurate figure is needed to calculate how much oil may be hidden below the surface, doing damage to the deep-sea environment.

"It's a mind-boggling number any way you cut it," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University environmental studies professor. "It'll be well beyond Ixtoc by the time it's finished."

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[Jolie Rouge]

Florida tests inventors' sand-cleaning ideas
Melissa Nelson, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jul 2, 7:36 am ET

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – Some inventors came with cotton fiber rolls, others with oil-clumping polymer mixes and one brought a specially designed rake. Their task: clean layers of crude oil and tar from a once-pristine Florida beach and prove they have the right stuff to combat the gummy onshore residue of the massive Gulf oil spill.

The 18 U.S. and Canadian inventors displayed their science to save Florida's beaches Thursday in a high-stakes clean-off under the critical gaze of evaluators. They were winnowed from among more than 400 people who submitted ideas.

"If we can find some gems out here, we hope we can start using them ASAP. We are looking for something that spreads easily and is effective. The answer isn't just one tool, we need a lot of tools for different weather conditions, for out in the water, on the beaches, in the marshes," said Darryl Boudreau, assistant director for the Northwest Florida district of the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Intermittent rains, winds and a driving surf churned by Hurricane Alex didn't stop dozens of local, state, Coast Guard and other officials from coming to watch. Evaluators from the state's environmental department, which organized the event, and from oil company BP PLC walked around the tar-covered beach to see the technologies in action and chat with inventors.

Kalty Vazquez of Miami held a bucket in one hand and with the other he spread a green-sandy substance called GreenTech over his plot. Vazquez then raked through the tar and GreenTech and scooped the raked sand with a strainer, leaving mostly clean sand behind. He later demonstrated how GreenTech worked in water, helping to form larger tar balls that are easier to pick up.

Watching closely, clipboard in hand and dressed in full rain gear, evaluator Daniel Kuncicky had lots of complicated questions about how the polymer-based product worked.

Nearby, another group blanketed the sand with a cotton-fiber roll. The idea was for the oil and tar to adhere to the cotton when it was rolled up.

But the group said it worked best when heavy machinery rolled over the cotton and pressed it into the sand. Lacking the machinery, they stomped on the cotton with their feet. Only a small part of the mess was removed when the cotton came up.

Bill Vasden Jr. grows his oil spill cleanup solution on 1,500 acres in Tampa. The biodiesel and feed starch farmer believes kenaf, a kind of grass, is the answer to soaking up oil as it washes on shore. Vasden displayed kenaf booms on the beach.

Auto mechanics have long used the material to clean oil from their floors, he said.

"It's a fibrous grass, it's renewable and we can burn it for energy," he said. "We have 1,500 acres of it already."

Among those who came to check out the ideas was Buck Lee, chairman of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, which oversees Pensacola Beach.

"Whoever invents the magic dust is going to be a millionaire," Lee said, as he handled phone call after phone call from people concerned about the oil-covered beach.

Some solutions were simple.

Jeff Powell demonstrated a tar-ball rake. Powell's Pensacola-based company, Ellis Trap and Cage Manufacturing, has long sold crab and bait-fish traps and sand flea rakes. The oil spill has hit his company hard, so Powell said he came up with another idea — a rake that traps tar balls and filters out the sand. In about 30 minutes he raked his plot of sand and left a clean section.

Peat moss is Canadian John Green's answer. He demonstrated Sphagsorb, a microbe-enhanced peat moss. The product has worked in Canadian oil spills. Ten pounds of the Sphagsorb collects about 40 pounds of oil and tar, he said, as he spread the stuff over his plot. He glommed up a large wad of tar with his gloved hand to show how it caused the tar to stick together and made it easier to remove.

Other ideas included spraying microbes onto the sand with containers that looked like bug sprayers, and mesh matting that could be removed from the sand after the tar washes on shore.

After an hour, the small section of beach in front of the public walkway where the inventors demonstrated their ideas looked much cleaner than when they started.

But evaluators were mum about whether they would choose any of the ideas or how quickly the public might see them in action.

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[Jolie Rouge]

BP oil spill costs hit $100 million/day
Mon Jun 28, 8:36 am ET

LONDON (Reuters) – BP said it had spent $300 million on its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response effort in the past three days, hitting the $100 million/day spend rate for the first time and bringing its total bill to $2.65 billion so far.

The figures, which BP released in a statement on Monday, include the cost of trying to cap the well, clean up the environmental damage caused by the leaking crude and pay compensation to those affected by the spill.

BP added it remained on track to complete its relief well, which aims to kill the leaking well at the point it meets the reservoir, in the three month timeframe initially envisaged, despite progress slowing on the well in recent days.

Last week, the well was being drilled at the rate of 1,000 feet per day, but the pace dropped to less than 100 feet a day over the weekend, as the delicate task of closing in on the leaking well is conducted.

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Flotilla of barges used as La. oil barricade
By Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 28, 12:42 pm ET

GRAND ISLE, La. – Mired in a daily battle against the oil soiling Louisiana's shorelines, marshes and wetlands, locals in this barrier island town are pushing ahead with a novel plan to block the crude's path with a flotilla of barges. "The Cajun navy," Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle calls it.

They're using the barges to partially block five passes where water from the Gulf of Mexico flows between barrier islands into Barataria Bay, an ecological treasure trove of shrimp nurseries, oyster beds, pelican rookeries and fertile fishing grounds. Barges were moved into the first of the passes last week.

In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans to use barges to create a similar blockade of Destin Pass on the Panhandle.

Oil has already seeped into Barataria Bay, where a rainbow sheen coats huge swaths of the water's surface and thick patches of gooey crude cling to marsh islands. The goal is to keep the damage from getting any worse as the blown well spews hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf each day. "We've got to stop any more from coming in," said Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young.

However, bad weather can interfere with the barge placements. Chris Roberts, another Jefferson councilman, said rough seas generated by Tropical Storm Alex across the Gulf had force removal of barges that were being placed in Pass Abel, just off Grand Isle. The barges were to be arranged in a V-shape to trap oil in the tip as it's pushed forward by tides and currents. Vaccuum trucks aboard the barges will suck it up.

The barges were being secured with pylons hammered into the Gulf seabed in about 10 feet of water. It was unclear Monday morning when they would be redeployed. "The barges will have to be removed every time bad weather threatens and seas are high," Roberts said in an e-mail. "The pilings can be left and it will take 24 hours to re-mobilize."

Roberts said the removal of the barges demonstrated the need for another plan favored by Jefferson Parish and state officials, the placement of rocks in the passes. The Army Corps of Engineers, which recently approved the barge blockade after local officials pushed it for weeks, is reviewing the plan to use rocks.

The corps recognizes there aren't enough resources to fight the onslaught of crude and calls the barge plan a novel mix of local ingenuity and available equipment. "Instead of having that oil slap up next to the banks, they want to funnel it into certain areas where they can actually capture it," said Mike Farabee, a chief evaluator in the corps' New Orleans regulatory office. "The barge idea was a really good idea because we do have a lot of barges down here and not enough boom, so you use what you have," Farabee added. "What you have here is people using some ingenuity."

Millions of gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion on BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Since then, large swaths of sticky crude and wide patches of a thin sheen have been pushing into the state's marshes and wetlands.

From boom to sand berms, and now barges, state and local officials are trying just about anything to keep the oil at bay. "We want to fight this oil before it gets into our ecosystems, before it gets into our wetlands," Gov. Bobby Jindal said. "I'd much rather fight the oil on the barges and the rocks."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100628/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_spill_barge_barriers/print;_ylt=Aob0fjoXXnTaXjZCKvVdAAGp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBycjdqNWs0BHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDYm90dG9tBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf lament: Everything's different now
By Pauline Arrillaga, Ap National Writer Mon Jun 28, 7:01 am ET

MARRERO, La. – In a pretty brick house on a cul-de-sac with a basketball hoop and flowering crape myrtles, a little boy with big blue eyes and hair the color of sand is trying to understand why Daddy is gone so much these days.

Daddy missed his graduation from pre-kindergarten last month, where he got a special award for spelling his colors right. He missed his first swimming lesson of the summer, too. Since the oil began gushing into the blue Gulf waters, Daddy even misses bedtime every now and then.

And so this particular June morning is a precious gift for 3-year-old Bryce Hebert. Daddy's home for a couple of hours, eating biscuits, cutting the grass and playing with him and sister Gracey. Things almost seem normal again, as the boy sifts through building blocks on the family room floor. Then his father gets up from the couch and kisses Gracey on the cheek. "All right," he says. "I've gotta go."

Bryce looks up with those innocent eyes and asks, ever so sweetly, "Go where?"

"Work" didn't used to mean what it means for Kris Hebert now: Seven days a week of being a "boat chauffeur," shuttling reporters, politicians and government workers to and from oil mop-up sites — a job that forces him to cruise daily past the marshes stained with crude where he once made a paycheck doing what he loved.

Before the catastrophe, Hebert was living his dream. A boat captain and fishing guide, he spent his mornings taking anglers around the marshes of Barataria Bay, hunting all his honey holes for redfish and speckled trout. He was up and out of the house before dawn, but he was home by midafternoon to play with Bryce, eat dinner with his wife, Brandy, and see his son and 7-month-old daughter to bed. Off-days meant taking Bryce out fishing, the way his father and grandpa once took him.

His days were filled with hard work but equally hard play, that "way of life" so many on the Gulf Coast speak of fervently.

Now that "way" is a study in sacrifice and survival. Long days making money while you can. Treasured moments missed: Gracey rolling over for the first time and saying "Da Da," dinner with Brandy on their anniversary. It is living day-to-day with the uncertainty of not knowing what next week, next month or even, heaven forbid, next year will bring.

It is, quite simply, doing what you have to do to go on.

And so Hebert kisses his children goodbye each morning, slides his sunglasses into place, climbs into his pickup wearing a shirt that says "Capt. Kris," and heads to Lafitte, a fishing village that has been his home away from home for years, where the oil has not only commandeered the waterways but an entire community and the existence of those who live and work there.

And he understands when his boy asks "Where" or "Why," and sits outside some afternoons to wait for him to come home, even though he'll be late.

After all, how can a child possibly grasp what even grown-ups are struggling to accept?

Everything is different now.

___

You see it all along the coast, this balancing act between mourning and trying to move on. There are some depressingly conspicuous signs that go beyond the tarballs rolling up on white sand. In Grand Isle, once an oceanfront haven for families, one homeowner erected a cemetery in his front yard with dozens of white crosses thrust into the grass and words scribbled in black to represent all that's been lost: "Fishing." "Brown Pelican." "Shrimp." But also: "Beach Sunsets." "Sand Between My Toes." "Our Soul."

The beach there is cordoned off with an orange mesh gate to keep visitors out of the water, and beyond that lies a giant snake of ugly orange boom. There's still a small patch of sand open, but only a few sunbathers are willing to endure the new view. The Gulf Stream Marina has become a staging ground for news conferences. A National Guard truck is parked at the post office. And Linda Marie, a massage therapist who's lived here a decade, wakes up every day wondering: Now what?

"The future is all `ifs,'" she says. "If a hurricane will come. If oil comes up onto our shores." The present, she says, is "just sadness and death all around."

The Gulf Coast people are resilient, that's true. They've endured much more than most and have had to learn how to pick up the pieces and start again and then again. It wasn't just Katrina, but then Hurricane Rita right on its heels and, three years later, the back-to-back blows of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

Alongthebayou.com, a community website for the town of Lafitte, shows satellite images of all four storms and pictures of the battered community: The Piggy Wiggly under water. The "Hair by Jeanine" sign nearly drowned. Airboats ferrying residents to safety. "If this didn't scare you away," the site reads, "then Lafitte is in your heart, and you're not going anywhere."

But the spill is an altogether different kind of storm.

"It's like dealing with a hurricane because it's a constantly evolving situation," says Raymond Griffin, who owns the charming dock and fishing lodge that sit around the corner and across the swing bridge from the Lafitte Town Hall, now converted into a BP claims center. "But a hurricane's over within 24 to 48 hours and then it's cleaned up and you get your life back together. This is: We don't know, we don't know."

Griffin is a man of 55 who smiles a lot beneath a thick mustache, no matter what life throws at him. He first came to Lafitte, 30 miles due south of New Orleans, 12 years ago when he worked for a company writing training manuals. He went fishing, fell in love with the water, quit his six-figure job and started a fishing camp. At the time, his wife laughed at the idea.

His first year he hired one local guy as a guide, and they did 250 trips together, taking tourists and city types in and out of the marshy bays to fish.

This year, before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and the spill that keeps on spilling and the government closing his waters to fishing, Griffin and his seven guides did 250 trips in the month of May alone. He had 600 more bookings for June, July and August, but has already sent out more than $15,000 in refunds.

He uses the past tense now when talking about the business that was his passion. "This used to be our fishing lodge." "Our little place used to do up to 1,000 trips a year."

"Gone," he sighs. "It's all gone."

What's not gone is his ability to adapt. Instead of anglers, Griffin is housing oil recovery workers at the lodge. He helped some of his guides — including Kris Hebert — get jobs as boat captains for a disaster contractor hired by BP to coordinate recovery. Instead of grilling burgers or frying fish in the afternoon for his guests, he runs two boats filled with meals out to mop-up sites scattered across the water. He's up at 4 a.m. to oversee the breakfast run, then sneaks in a nap before he's up again to sometimes act as a "boat chauffeur" himself.

The adjustment hasn't been so easy for his wife, Belinda, who after her initial skepticism came to adore their little enterprise. She greeted the customers with a cheery smile and listened to all their fish tales at night on the dock. Nowadays, she mostly stays in the apartment above the lodge. One afternoon Griffin found her on the bed, weeping, and she confided her concern over the long hours he's working — "juggling a china plate, a sword and a power saw," she said. He did his best to reassure her that he, and they, would be OK. "Like anything else, when you start something new it's hard," he says one night, sitting on his dock as the sun dips over the water. "In 2 1/2 weeks time, I've had to learn how to be a boat broker, a food service delivery manager, a soft shoulder to cry on and deal with my own personal grief about losing my business, my way of life. But I choose to keep smiling and keep going. "The one thing I do know: This isn't forever. There'll be an end to this, whether it's a year or two years or three years. My idea is if I just keep working hard and I ignore what's really happening, then I'll get through it."

( continues ... )

[Jolie Rouge]

Hebert went to work for Griffin (Mr. Raymond, he calls him) six years ago after toiling as an auto mechanic. He'd fished all his life, got his first boat when he was just 8 years old, and turning his hobby into his profession was a dream come true.

Inside Griffin's deserted dining room, beneath walls decorated with fishing rods and photographs of the damage Ike and Katrina wrought, Hebert pulls out a small photo album and flips through pages filled with better times, pictures of him and his many clients showing off their catches with proud grins.

"Before on a weekend, you'd have 300 boats fishing out there. Now you don't see nothing but work boats. I miss it. Trawlers shrimping. Crabbers," he says. "There's nothing like coming back on the dock and being with all the guys and telling stories and drinking beer. Money don't describe that."

That's what so many of the outsiders flooding here now don't seem to understand, be they BP people or suits from Washington, D.C. The way of life has never really been about the money. Hebert's making enough to get by as a "BP worker." Lots of people are — some more than they would have shrimping or crabbing. Says one shrimper who now drives a food boat for Griffin: "This is my first real job, pretty much."

David Volion owns Voleo's Seafood Restaurant down the road from Griffin's place. The same contractor paying Griffin and Hebert is paying him and some of the other eateries to make meals a week at a time for all the workers on the water now (the joke is they've expanded Lafitte's population of about 1,800 by at least 500 more).

Volion says if he plays his cards right he could make more money in the next two years than in the first 45 of his life. But then what happens when the workers pack up, leaving behind waterways no longer producing the shrimp, crabs and fish that put Lafitte on the map?

"You'll have seafood, but not local. And who's gonna want to come to a sterile town where everything's not local? That niche is gone," he says. "What do you do? Become a burger joint? A pizza joint? A steakhouse?"

Dorothy Wiseman coordinates activities at the Lafitte Senior Center, which itself has been turned into a command post. A few weeks back, she and her seniors relocated to the brand-new multipurpose center a block over, and they play bingo in the room that was supposed to be a fisheries museum. That project is suspended for now.

Wiseman is 70 but has lived in Lafitte since she was a girl. She thinks about the life she and her friends have always known, and the one they endure now, and she grieves the small things that are gone. Sons and husbands bringing home so much shrimp, crab and fish that some elders never had to buy seafood at a grocery store. Holidays spent with family in peace, where this past Father's Day all the talk was about that still-spewing oil and, "What should be done. What can be done. What hasn't been done."

With most of the fishermen out laying boom, or picking it up once the oil has soaked through, Wiseman says: "Our men are doing something that's dangerous."

"The biggest thing is worry. We're worried about our homes. We're worried about the next storm coming in that could bring all this oil into our area. We're worried about being forced, possibly, to have to move permanently," she says. "The biggest thing that's happening to all of us is that we're very, very worried."

She's made it her mission to maintain as much of a normal routine as she can for the seniors, so at least some folks can escape the bad news for a while. Line dancing is still every Wednesday afternoon. Duck carving follows. And, until further notice, the bingo games start at 10:30 a.m. Fridays — inside the museum that might not be finished any time soon.

___

At home in Marrero, Brandy Hebert thinks of contingencies just in case her husband's job suddenly ends, fishing doesn't come back and the money starts to run out.

She's 25 and wonders about things like: Do they really need their home telephone?

She explains to Bryce about the oil, and the boy knows that Daddy has, as he calls it, "a new work." She videotapes special occasions such as Bryce's graduation, and she calls her husband when something amazing happens, like Gracey saying "Da Da." They've put off their daughter's christening.

Says Brandy: "You just have to learn: one day at a time."

Kris Hebert still would rather be on the water than doing anything else, but the water isn't the haven it once was for him. Each day is another expedition to an environmental wasteland. He drives past coils of boom corralling marshland blotched brown. He takes officials to passes blocked by gigantic barges to stop the creeping oil. Wilkinson Canal has become a floating warehouse, with barges parked along the shoreline stacked with plastic bags full of boom.

And yet there are glimpses, too, of what was: Waterside stores peddling live cocahoes, a favorite bait for redfish. Locals sitting on porch swings, waving as the boats go by. Closer to Lafitte, grasslands remain untouched by the crude. For now, it's all a bit of a tease and a daily reminder of what's gone, as are some of the questions Hebert faces from the many guests on his boat. A group of reporters one day. Out-of-state mayors the next. Department of Homeland Security and so on.

"How long have you been in the fishing business?" a Florida mayor asks one recent trip.

"All my life," Hebert replies, as he always does.

"How old are you?" the mayor asks, and Capt. Kris tells him: 28.

He uses the idle chitchat as an opportunity to encourage out-of-towners to not let anyone forget about what's happening down here, or about the help the Gulf Coast will need for some time. "We can't let it get out of the people's minds."

It angers him, all that's happened. But he tries to make the best of it. He had fun that day he drove the mayors around, despite the strange scenes flying by, devastation and paradise side by side. On the way back to Lafitte, he turned the radio on, slid the volume up and started dancing in place and singing along, not noticing how poignant the song lyrics were: "These are the moments I thank God that I'm alive."

It was a pretty good day. And the following afternoon, Hebert got off earlier than usual and was home at 6, in time to run A-B-C flashcards with Bryce, read him a book and play outside. Later that night, when BP and the Coast Guard were holding an open house in the Lafitte high school gym, Hebert was home, saying goodnight to his kids.

What do you do when you lose everything you know and love? You march on, sure. You find distractions. You adapt. Your way of life becomes something a little different. A little worse? Maybe.

But when those moments of happiness do come, you relish them. They mean more now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100628/ap_on_re_us/us_oil_spill_living_with_catastrophe/print;_ylt=AuEhOgDCNaGF9mkhGDxX2cWp_aF4;_ylu=X3oDM TBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--

[Jolie Rouge]

Fourth of July and Thoreau remind us that US progress is linked with its ecology

Danny Heitman – Fri Jul 2, 9:21 am ET

Baton Rouge, La. – The Fourth of July is not only America’s birthday, but also the anniversary of one of the boldest experiments in American letters.

On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts and began writing “Walden,” the autobiographical book that would define his legacy.

Thoreau was many things – naturalist, political dissident, professional crank – but he was also one of our earliest and most memorable media critics.

His reservations about the limits of journalism resonate with particular urgency today, as a massive oil spill near my home state of Louisiana underscores what Thoreau found lacking in media culture.

“I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper,” Thoreau told readers of “Walden.” “If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed ... we never need read of another....

“To a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

Thoreau had other ideas about what was newsworthy, as I’ve been reminded recently while perusing editor Damion Searls’s masterly abridged new version of Thoreau’s journals. The journals are a sustained record of the natural world – the slant of light in a summer sky, the flow of sap from New England maples, the arrival of spring birds “more sure than the arrival of the sailing and steaming packets.”

In Thoreau’s time, as in ours, nature didn’t usually didn’t make news unless it was touched by obvious trouble.

If war, as one wit famously observed, is “God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” then environmental disasters such as the BP oil spill seem to be the primary way that Americans learn about ecology.

In “Walden” and his other writings, Thoreau argued for a less fragmentary understanding of land and water, one based on a daily intimacy with the realities of how man and nature interact.

It’s a grasp of the natural world that the news cycle, with its emphasis on crisis and conflict, seems ill-suited to sustain.

Thoreau said that his decision to move to the woods of Walden on Independence Day was merely an accident of the calendar. Coincidental or not, Thoreau’s timing reminds us that his sense of America’s possibility was inextricably linked with the wonder of its landscape.

That connection is worth remembering on this Independence Day, as an ongoing oil spill places our natural bounty at risk.

Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100702/cm_csm/311995

[Jolie Rouge]

BP boss in MidEast as relief well progresses
Amena Bakr And Anna Driver – 1 hr 28 mins ago

ABU DHABI/HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP boss Tony Hayward met with an Abu Dhabi state investment fund on Wednesday, part of a quest for cash to ward off takeovers and help pay for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The action on Thursday was set to move back to the courts with the oil drilling industry going head-to-head with the Obama administration over the White House effort to suspend deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for six months in the wake of the catastrophic well blowout.

Hayward, BP's chief executive, was seen by Reuters with a senior official from another Abu Dhabi fund, and a report said Saudi investors were looking to buy 10 percent to 15 percent of the British oil company.

A United Arab Emirates official said Hayward's visit with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) was a routine one. An ADIA spokesman declined comment.

"We are here to talk to our existing shareholders," a cheerful-looking Hayward told Reuters in the ornate, marble lobby of an Abu Dhabi office building before heading into a meeting, along with his six-man entourage.

But bankers say BP is on a marketing drive for its stock, whose price has fallen by half since its well blew out in April, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and soiling the shores of every U.S. Gulf Coast state.

BP executives have held talks with sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and Singapore, seeking a partner that might help it avoid being taken over, a UAE source said.

Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company, was not interested in buying a BP stake, a company source said.

BP's shares on the New York Stock Exchange closed up almost 4 percent, buoyed by investor relief the company had said it does not plan to issue new equity, and speculation the worst is behind for what they see as an underpriced energy giant.

"With the CEO in Abu Dhabi speaking to the sovereign wealth fund to get some investment, it's not surprising that there is some enthusiasm in the market for BP shares," said Mic Mills, head of electronic trading at London-based ETX Capital.

POLITICAL DISASTER?

Progress on the relief well, seen as the best hope for finally stopping the 79-day-old disaster, also lifted investor hearts. The U.S. official overseeing the spill cleanup said it was 15 feet from the side of the leaking well, although still not expected to be finished before mid-August.

The spill is wreaking havoc on coastal ecosystems, killing birds, sea turtles and dolphins and risking multibillion-dollar fishing and tourist industries at a time of high unemployment.

As a result, it sits atop U.S. President Barack Obama's crowded domestic agenda and has sternly tested his leadership.

On Thursday, the next big round will play out in court in the fight between the drilling industry and the White House over its efforts to suspend offshore drilling.

Given the business and environmental stakes, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans is expected to rule quickly, after a rare one-hour oral argument, on whether deepwater drilling should be temporarily halted again.

A federal judge, also in New Orleans, lifted the moratorium last month after Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc. argued it was arbitrary because it was a blanket ban on all new drilling in depths below 500 feet.

The Obama administration appealed the decision, defending the suspension as needed to provide time to probe the BP oil spill's cause and ensure other drilling rigs operate safely.

It is seeking a stay of the judge's ruling at the hearing, slated for 3 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) on Thursday.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the ban will reduce crude output an average of 82,000 barrels per day, more than previously estimated.

A successful court challenge "could give some of these (drillers') stocks a lift in the near term," said Channing Smith, co-portfolio manager of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Capital Advisors Growth Fund.

The European Union's energy chief said the bloc should consider its own moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling until after a probe into the BP spill.

Estimates of the leak's severity vary widely, to as high as 100,000 barrels per day. A new collection vessel that should more than double BP's oil-capture capacity to 53,000 barrels a day from around 25,000 is projected to take three more days to hook up, as rough seas hamper efforts to finish the job.

With the region settling into the six-month hurricane season, forecasters were watching a weather system over the southern Gulf that could develop into a tropical depression and hit the coast near the Texas-Mexico border on Thursday.

Pushed by the Obama administration, BP has committed to a $20 billion fund for clean-up and other costs stemming from the spill. Its costs to date have topped $3 billion.

The final bill may depend on how much crude pours from the well, which blew when a rig exploded on April 20.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that BP plans to push back against a request from the U.S. government for advance notice of any asset sales or other large transactions in the wake of the spill.

Asset sales could be used to help cover spill costs.

The report, in the paper's online edition, cited a person with knowledge of BP's thinking as saying the company would examine how to address concerns "without having to give advance notice of market-sensitive information and transactions."

The U.S. Justice Department had requested that all the companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, including BP, advise the department about its plans for transactions such as asset sales, divestments or other major financial dealings.

A BP spokesman would only confirm that the company had received the request and that it had not yet responded.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100708/ts_nm/us_oil_spill

[Jolie Rouge]

Scientists say Gulf spill altering food web
Matthew Brown And Ramit Plushnick-masti, AP Writers – 1 hr 44 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – Scientists are reporting early signs that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is altering the marine food web by killing or tainting some creatures and spurring the growth of others more suited to a fouled environment.

Near the spill site, researchers have documented a massive die-off of pyrosomes — cucumber-shaped, gelatinous organisms fed on by endangered sea turtles.

Along the coast, droplets of oil are being found inside the shells of young crabs that are a mainstay in the diet of fish, turtles and shorebirds.

And at the base of the food web, tiny organisms that consume oil and gas are proliferating.

If such impacts continue, the scientists warn of a grim reshuffling of sealife that could over time cascade through the ecosystem and imperil the region's multibillion-dollar fishing industry.

Federal wildlife officials say the impacts are not irreversible, and no tainted seafood has yet been found. But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who chairs a House committee investigating the spill, warned Tuesday that the problem is just unfolding and toxic oil could be entering seafood stocks as predators eat contaminated marine life.

"You change the base of the food web, it's going to ripple through the entire food web," said marine scientist Rob Condon, who found oil-loving bacteria off the Alabama coastline, more than 90 miles from BP's collapsed Deepwater Horizon drill rig. "Ultimately it's going to impact fishing and introduce a lot of contaminants into the food web."

The food web is the fundamental fabric of life in the Gulf. Once referred to as the food chain, the updated term reflects the cyclical nature of a process in which even the largest predator becomes a food source as it dies and decomposes.

What has emerged from research done to date are snapshots of disruption across a swath of the northern Gulf of Mexico. It stretches from the 5,000-feet deep waters at the spill site to the continental shelf off Alabama and the shallow coastal marshes of Louisiana.

Much of the spill — estimated at up to 182 million gallons of oil and around 12 billion cubic feet of natural gas — was broken into small droplets by chemical dispersants at the site of the leaking well head. That reduced the direct impact to the shoreline and kept much of the oil and natural gas suspended in the water.

But immature crabs born offshore are suspected to be bringing that oil — tucked into their shells — into coastal estuaries from Pensacola, Fla., to Galveston, Texas. Oil being carried by small organisms for long distances means the spill's effects could be wider than previously suspected, said Tulane professor Caz Taylor.

Chemical oceanographer John Kessler from Texas A&M University and geochemist David Valentine from the University of California-Santa Barbara recently spent about two weeks sampling the waters in a six-mile radius around the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig. More than 3,000 feet below the surface, they found natural gas levels have reached about 100,000 times normal, Kessler said.

Already those concentrations are pushing down oxygen levels as the gas gets broken down by bacteria, Kessler and Valentine said. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil and gas grinds to a halt and most life can't be sustained.

The researchers also found dead pyrosomes covering the Gulf's surface in and around the spill site. "There were thousands of these guys dead on the surface, just a mass eradication of them," Kessler said.

Scientists said they believe the pyrosomes — six inches to a foot in length — have been killed by the toxins in the oil because there have no other explanation, though they plan further testing.

The researchers say the dead creatures probably are floating to the surface rather than sinking because they have absorbed gas bubbles as they filtered water for food.

The death of pyrosomes could set off a ripple effect. One species that could be directly affected by what is happening to the pyrosomes would be sea turtles, said Laurence Madin, a research director at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod, Mass. Some larger fish, such as tuna, may also feed on pyrosomes.

"If the pyrosomes are dying because they've got hydrocarbons in their tissues and then they're getting eaten by turtles, it's going to get into the turtles," said Madin. It was uncertain whether that would kill or sicken the turtles.

The BP spill also is altering the food web by providing vast food for bacteria that consume oil and gas, allowing them to flourish.

At the same time, the surface slick is blocking sunlight needed to sustain plant-like phytoplankton, which under normal circumstances would be at the base of the food web.

Phytoplankton are food for small bait fish such as menhaden, and a decline in those fish could reduce tuna, red snapper and other populations important to the Gulf's fishing industries, said Condon, a researcher with Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

Seafood safety tests on hundreds of fish, shrimp and other marine life that could make it into the food supply so far have turned up negative for dangerous oil contamination.

Assuming the BP gusher is stopped and the cleanup successful, government and fishing industry scientists said the Gulf still could rebound to a healthy condition.

Ron Luken, chief scientist for Omega Protein, a Houston-based company that harvests menhaden to extract fish oil, says most adult fish could avoid the spill by swimming to areas untainted by crude. Young fish and other small creatures already in those clean waters could later repopulate the impacted areas.

"I don't think anybody has documented wholesale changes," said Steve Murawski, chief scientist for the National Marine Fisheries Service. "If that actually occurs, that has a potentially great ramification for life at the higher end of the food web."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100714/ap_on_sc/us_gulf_oil_spill_food_web;_ylt=AtfJY7bXwOp._zM.7X lTf_Os0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlbm1lNDhvBHBvcwM2NgRzZWMDYW Njb3JkaW9uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNzY2llbnRpc3Rzc2E-


Wow, did you really need to be a scientist to figure that one out? :doh: Earthshattering Newsflash! Millions of gallons of oil now in the Gulf is altering the eco-system that previsouly did not include millions of gallons of oil. And we paid someone how much for this study??? If you lick a hot frying pan you just might burn your tongue.There - I just saved $$ Millions in study!!

I guess it is as newsworthy as: "Jimmy goes swimming and is surprised at getting wet"

[Jolie Rouge]

[b]
Colleen Long And Harry R. Weber, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 2 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS – The oil has stopped. For now. After 85 days and up to 184 million gallons, BP finally gained control over one of America's biggest environmental catastrophes Thursday by placing a carefully fitted cap over a runaway geyser that has been gushing crude into the Gulf of Mexico since early spring.

Though a temporary fix, the accomplishment was greeted with hope, high expectations — and, in many cases along the beleaguered coastline, disbelief. From one Gulf Coast resident came this: "Hallelujah." And from another: "I got to see it to believe it."

If the cap holds, if the sea floor doesn't crack and if the relief wells being prepared are completed successfully, this could be the beginning of the end for the spill. But that's a lot of ifs, and no one was declaring any sort of victory beyond the moment.

The oil stopped flowing at 3:25 p.m. EDT when the last of three valves in the 75-ton cap was slowly throttled shut. That set off a 48-hour watch period in which — much like the hours immediately after a surgery — the patient was in stable, guarded condition and being watched closely for complications.

"It's a great sight," said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, who immediately urged caution. The flow, he said, could resume. "It's far from the finish line. ... It's not the time to celebrate."

Nevertheless, one comforting fact stood out: For the first time since an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers April 20 and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet beneath the water's surface, no oil was flowing into the Gulf.

President Barack Obama, who has encouraged, cajoled and outright ordered BP to stop the leak, called Thursday's development "a positive sign." But Obama, whose political standing has taken a hit because of the spill and accusations of government inaction, cautioned that "we're still in the testing phase."

The worst-case scenario would be if the oil forced down into the bedrock ruptured the seafloor irreparably. Leaks deep in the well bore might also be found, which would mean that oil would continue to flow into the Gulf. And there's always the possiblity of another explosion, either from too much pressure or from a previously unknown unstable piece of piping.

The drama that unfolded quietly in the darkness of deep water Thursday was a combination of trial, error, technology and luck. It came after weeks of repeated attempts to stop the oil — everything from robotics to different capping techniques to stuffing the hole with mud and golf balls.

The week leading up to the moment where the oil stopped was a series of fitful starts and setbacks.

Robotic submarines working deep in the ocean removed a busted piece of pipe last weekend, at which point oil flowed unimpeded into the water. That was followed by installation of a connector that sits atop the spewing well bore — and by Monday the 75-ton metal cap, a stack of lines and valves latched onto the busted well.

After that, engineers spent hours creating a map of the rock under the sea floor to spot potential dangers, like gas pockets. They also shut down two ships collecting oil above the sea to get an accurate reading on the pressure in the cap.

As the oil flowed up to the cap, increasing the pressure, two valves were shut off like light switches, and the third dialed down on a dimmer switch until it too was choked off.

And just like that, the oil stopped.

It's not clear yet whether the oil will remain bottled in the cap, or whether BP will choose to use the new device to funnel the crude into four ships on the surface.

For nearly two months, the world's window into the disaster has been through a battery of BP cameras, known as the "spillcam." The constant stream of spewing oil became a fixture on cable TV news and web feeds.

That made it all the more dramatic on Thursday when, suddenly, it was no more.

On the video feed, the violently churning cloud of oil and gas coming out of a narrow tube thinned, and tapered off. Suddenly, there were a few puffs of oil, surrounded by cloudy dispersant that BP was pumping on top. Then there was nothing.

"Finally!" said Renee Brown, a school guidance counselor visiting Pensacola Beach, Fla., from London, Ky. "Honestly, I'm surprised that they haven't been able to do something sooner, though."

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's face lit up when he heard the news. "I think a lot of prayers were answered today," he said.

The next 48 hours are critical. Engineers and scientists will be monitoring the cap around the clock, looking for pressure changes. High pressure is good, because it shows there's only a single leak. Low pressure, below 6,000 pounds per square inch or so, could mean more leaks farther down in the well.

Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral overseeing the spill for the government, said they are deciding as they go along whether to release oil into the water again. At the end of the 48-hour test it's possible oil will start to flow again — but, theoretically, in a controlled manner.

When the test is complete, more seafloor mapping will be done to detect any damage or deep-water leaks.

The saga has devastated BP, costing it billions in everything from cleanup to repair efforts to plunging stock prices. Though BP shares have edged upward, they shot higher in the last hour of trading on Wall Street after the company announced the oil had stopped. Shares rose $2.74, or 7.6 percent, to close at $38.92 — still well below the $60.48 they fetched before the rig explosion.

The Gulf Coast has been shaken economically, environmentally and psychologically by the hardships of the past three months. That feeling of being swatted around — by BP, by the government, by fate even — was evident in the wide spectrum of reactions to news of the capping.

"Hallelujah! That's wonderful news," Belinda Griffin, who owns a charter fishing lodge in Lafitte, La., said upon hearing the gusher had stopped. "Now if we can just figure out what to do with all the oil that's in the Gulf, we'll be in good shape."

The fishing industry in particular has been buffeted by fallout from the spill. Surveys of oyster grounds in Louisiana showed extensive deaths of the shellfish. Large sections of the Gulf Coast — which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the oysters eaten in the United States — have been closed to harvesting, which helps explain why one oysterman in Louisiana refused to accept that progress was afoot.

Prove it, said Stephon LaFrance of Buras, La.

"I've been out of work since this happened, right? And I ain't never received nothing from BP since this oil spill happened," he said. "Like they say they stopped this oil leak. I think that's a lie. I got to see it to believe it."

Rosalie Lapeyrouse, who owns a grocery store and a shrimping operation in Chauvin, La. that cleans, boils and distributes the catch, was shocked.

"It what?" she said in disbelief. "It stopped?" she repeated after hearing the news.

"Oh, wow! That's good," she said, her face clouding. "I'm thinking they just stopped for a while. I don't think it's gonna last. They never could do nothing with it before."

Long after the out-of-control well is finally plugged, oil could still be washing up in marshes and on beaches as tar balls or disc-shaped patties. The sheen will dissolve over time, scientists say, and the slick will convert to another form.

There's also fear that months from now, oil could move far west to Corpus Christi, Texas, or farther east and hitch a ride on the loop current, possibly showing up as tar balls in Miami or North Carolina's Outer Banks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expecting to track the oil in all its formations for several months after the well is killed, said Steve Lehmann, a scientific support coordinator for the federal agency.

Once the well stops actively spewing oil, the slicks will rapidly weather and disappear, possibly within a week, and NOAA will begin to rely more heavily on low-flying aircraft to search for tar balls and patties. Those can last for years, Lehmann said.

In Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, the worst-hit area of the coast, frequent BP and government critic Billy Nungesser, the parish president, offered a word of caution: This whole mess, he said, is far from over.

"We better not let our guard down," Nungesser said. "We better not pull back the troops because, as we know, there's a lot of oil out there, on the surface, beneath it. And I truly believe that we're going to see oil coming ashore for the next couple of years."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100716/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=AgmU7IiZ4r5VQDgeWbztcBus0NU E;_ylu=X3oDMTFpdTk0OTh2BHBvcwMzNwRzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9 uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDYnBmaW5hbGx5c3Rv

[Jolie Rouge]

Gulf forecast: Cloudy with a chance of tar balls
By Jessica Gresko, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 19, 6:02 am ET

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100719/capt.26754caf672246e6aa7a7c2d199a1343-26754caf672246e6aa7a7c2d199a1343-0.jpg?x=213&y=163&xc=1&yc=1&wc=409&hc=313&q=85&sig=I102hHnXzyrHBkrkfr5fKw--

PENSACOLA, Fla. – Call it cloudy with a chance of tar balls.

TV forecasters along the Gulf Coast have been adding a new ritual to their daily weather lineup — predicting the path of oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon rig. But predicting the oil's movement is proving more difficult than predicting sunshine or showers. "It's the biggest challenge in forecasting simply because it's all new," said Jason Smith, a meteorologist at the Fox 10 station in Mobile, Ala. "I've tracked a lot of hurricanes, but this is the first oil spill I've had to track."

Forecasters began adding the slick to the outlook soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, but their initial success was spotty. The oil didn't move as quickly as meteorologists predicted, and residents in some areas like the Florida Panhandle spent days anticipating oil before it appeared. Even though BP PLC cut off the oil flow for the first time last week, forecasting oil's landfall will remain a challenge for months as the sticky stuff continues to wash up.

One fact that can make oil forecasting more difficult, meteorologists say, is that there are fewer data-collecting instruments out at sea than on land. Buoys and weather instruments attached to oil rigs provide eyes for forecasters, but with enormous ocean expanses to cover, patchy instrument coverage can leave forecasters blind in places. For help, weathermen have turned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been producing daily 24-, 48- and 72-hour forecasts noting where the spill is likely to be next.

NOAA's maps, made using modeling software and data from daily overflights by helicopters and planes, note the spots where the oil is likely to be most concentrated. But the maps aren't perfect, and forecasters have a particularly hard time predicting the path of tar balls, which are harder to detect than oil sheen. "One of the things about forecasting oil spills is it's pretty easy to show when you're wrong because there are a lot of people out there looking at it," said Doug Helton, who oversees the map production from NOAA's Seattle office.

With oil, he said, everyone wants to know how much will arrive and where. And when forecasters are wrong, they hear about it. "If you forecast a rain storm and you know it only rains 5/8ths inches of rain instead of an inch of rain then no one really complains," he said, not so with oil.

That's one reason TV forecasters sometimes add their own analysis, though NOAA's map is indispensable.

The meteorologists scour a NASA satellite picture of the actual slick. They pore over tide tables because tides help push oil into bays and rivers. They study currents, winds and heavy seas that also affect the oil's movement. "As a meteorologist I look at the winds and I look at the waves," explained Margaret Orr of WDSU in New Orleans.

Many forecasters have improvised, taking standard maps and adapting them as they go to generate their oil spill graphics. Some make their oil blobs green, others red or even a realistic brown.

The Alabama forecaster Smith — who doubles as WALA's fishing and outdoors reporter — has used a NASA satellite image in the past to help predict good fishing spots. Now he uses the same image, enhanced with the computer program Photoshop, to highlight oil sheen for viewers. Producing the oil images means more work each day, but his forecast segments now run a minute longer than pre-spill, about 3 1/2 minutes.

Viewers, meanwhile, have responded to the maps and graphics with additional questions, forecasters said. One frequent question: whether a hurricane could suck up oil and drop it on their homes. The answer is 'no,' because hurricanes only drop evaporated fresh water.

Meteorologists admit that while they are knowledgeable about wind and waves, they are still learning when it comes to the fine points of oil slick forecasting. Allen Strum, chief meteorologist at the ABC station WEAR in Pensacola, said meteorology school didn't include a class on oil spills, though he recalls taking one on oceanography. "I never ever anticipated that I would be talking about a forecast of junk on the water and where it was going," Strum said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100719/ap_on_re_us/us_gulf_oil_spill_forecasters/print

[Jolie Rouge]

Texas sues to block latest drilling ban

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/7149752.html



The state of Texas filed suit Wednesday challenging the federal ban on offshore drilling, saying it violates a law requiring officials to consult with the states on such matters first.

The Obama administration imposed a six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling permits in May, in reaction to the massive oil spill that followed the April 20 blowout of a BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

A federal judge in New Orleans blocked the ban after a number of energy companies filed suit challenging it.

On July 12, the Interior Department replaced the May ban with a new one containing some revisions and additional justifications.

In the lawsuit filed in Houston federal court Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson allege the administration didn't heed the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which requires the federal government to coordinate with states that might be affected by a drilling moratorium and weigh its economic impact. "The federal government ignored the state of Texas and failed to comply with the law when the secretary of the Interior unilaterally imposed the administration's offshore drilling ban," state Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a statement. "Under federal law, affected states are guaranteed the right to participate in offshore drilling-related policy decisions, but the Obama administration did not bother to communicate, coordinate or cooperate with Texas."

$622 million hit

An economic impact analysis by Louisiana State University says Texas will suffer a $622 million decrease in gross state product due to the six-month moratorium, according to the filing.

The administration's failure to consult Texas officials resulted in "an unjustified, arbitrary and capricious policy that will inflict economic harm upon coastal communities — particularly those that are most dependent upon offshore drilling for jobs and tax revenue," the suit alleges.

The suit asks the court to order the federal government to allow the state's participation in formulation of offshore policy and to take into account the moratorium's economic effects.

Kendra Barkoff, an Interior Department spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that she could not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, but that the oil spill showed the need for better health, safety and environmental standards for drilling operations, and better capabilities to control blowouts in deep water.
She also said the industry's ability to respond to new oil spills was hindered because virtually all available spill response assets were busy with the BP spill.

Group welcomes action

Lee Hunt, the Houston-based chief executive of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, said the group welcomed "any legal and legitimate action that will help bring an end to this moratorium."

The Obama administration has suggested it could lift the moratorium before the six-month period expires in November, but Hunt said the drilling industry has received little guidance about how to bring about that early end.

The ban allows some drilling in shallow water, but permits are only being granted after applicants follow new safety rules. So far the government has issued to two of nine shallow water permits sought under the tighter rules. The permits, to drill natural gas wells, went to Apache Corp. and Rooster Petroleum.
In general, shallow water is less than 500 feet deep.

Earlier suit moot?

In a related legal matter Wednesday, Justice Department attorneys asked the federal judge who overturned the initial six-month moratorium to throw out challenges to that ban because the government has revised the moratorium. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman didn't immediately rule on the government's request after hearing arguments in New Orleans.

The government argued that the lawsuit filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services and later joined by several other companies is moot in the wake of the July 12 moratorium, but company lawyers responded that the second moratorium is a "carbon copy" of the first. "What the government wants to do at every step of the way is put it off to another day," said Carl Rosenblum, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

No recusal

A few times during Wednesday's hearing, Feldman alluded to complaints he should have withdrawn from the case because of his investments in several oil and gas companies. Several environmental groups that support the moratorium asked Feldman to recuse himself, but the judge refused.

"Contrary to some uninformed opinion that's been expressed, I don't intend to prejudge anything," he said.
A separate lawsuit filed by ESNCO Offshore is challenging the new moratorium. Feldman also is presiding over that case but hasn't ruled on it and said he hasn't passed judgment on the new moratorium yet.

[Jolie Rouge]

New guidelines could rule out many oil claims
Curt Anderson, Ap Legal Affairs Writer – 1 hr 11 mins ago

MIAMI – A flower shop in Florida that saw a drop-off in weddings this summer is probably out of luck. So is a restaurant in Idaho that had to switch seafood suppliers. A hardware store on the Mississippi coast may be left out, too.

The latest guidelines for BP's $20 billion victims compensation fund say the nearer you are geographically to the oil spill and the more closely you depend on the Gulf of Mexico's natural resources, the better chance you have of getting a share of the money.

Also, a second set of rules expected this fall will require that businesses and individuals seeking compensation for long-term losses give up their right to sue BP and other spill-related companies — something that could save the oil giant billions.

The new rules for the claims process were released Friday by Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who was picked by President Barack Obama to run the fund and previously oversaw claims for 9/11 victims. Beginning Monday, the claims will be handled by Feinberg rather than BP, which is still footing the entire $20 billion bill.

Who gets paid and who doesn't will depend largely on how much proof there is that losses were caused by the spill and not by something else, such as the recession. Feinberg's guidelines say key factors include a claimant's geographic proximity to the disaster and how much the business or property is linked to "injured natural resources."

Feinberg elaborated on his reasoning during town meetings this week in Louisiana.

"How close are you to the beach? To the Gulf? BP got claims from restaurants in Idaho. Go figure," he said. "How close are you? That's a major factor. How dependent are you, as an individual or a business, on the resources of the Gulf?"

That worries business owners like Susan Mitchell, who runs a flower shop about a mile from Pensacola Beach, Fla., where tarballs from the spill washed up. She said her business was down about $4,000 this year in July from the year before.

"But it is hard to prove exactly why that is and everyone keeps telling us we have to prove that it was because of the oil," she said. "We usually have beach weddings all summer. We deliver to hotels with people having birthday parties and celebrations on the beach."

Jeffrey Breit, a Virginia-based lawyer who represents more than 600 Gulf Coast fishermen, said the geographic limitations will certainly cut out many deserving claimants.

"I think it's unfair to draw arbitrary geographic lines when it is clear that many businesses rely on the natural resources of the Gulf for their livelihoods," Breit said.

The new rules govern emergency claims that can be made between Monday and Nov. 23 at Gulf Coast claims offices, by mail or through the Internet. Feinberg said his goal is to issue emergency checks within 24 hours for individuals and seven days for businesses. Many people have complained about the sluggish BP process.

The attorneys general of Alabama and Florida sent Feinberg letters objecting to many of the new rules. Florida's Bill McCollum said people will face a much heavier burden of proof trying to show the spill caused their losses.

"The current process appears to be even less generous to Floridians than the BP process," McCollum wrote. "Such an outcome is completely unacceptable."

Those seeking emergency payments will not have to give up their right to sue BP and other companies. But the rules for final, long-term settlements will include a waiver of that right.

That drew protests Friday from a leading trial lawyers group, the American Association for Justice, which said the rule could force claimants to decide whether to accept a BP payment or go to court before the full extent of the damage is known. For example, attorneys said, there could be health effects that take years to develop, or environmental damage that might not surface for years.

"BP is trying to cut off damages. They realize that small payments will be grabbed by some, and then in the future they will have no access to justice," said Jere Beasley, a Montgomery, Ala., lawyer who is representing oil spill clients. "Which is sad, but true."

But many people might choose to file a claim because lawsuits can drag on for years and because attorneys often take one-third of any damages as their fee.

Already more than 300 lawsuits have been filed against BP and other companies involved in the disaster, which began April 20 with an explosion aboard an offshore oil rig that killed 11 workers.

At Diamondhead, Miss., along the Gulf Coast, Don Farrar, owner of Diamond Ace Hardware and Diamondhead Florist, said he has received two checks from BP for thousands of dollars but is worried what will happen when the claims process changes hands. He said the spill's economic toll has reached far beyond fishermen and tourist businesses.

"I have a hardware store and a florist. Even my florist is down," he said. "When a fishermen is not making money, he's not going to be buying a house, he's not going to be painting his house, and he's not going to be buying paint from me."

____

Associated Press writers Melissa Nelson in Pensacola, Fla., Mary Foster and Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., contributed to this story.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_claims

Online: Gulf Coast Claims Facility: http://www.gulfcoastclaimsfacility.com (goes live Aug. 23


"Who gets paid and who doesn't will depend largely on how much proof there is that losses were caused by the spill and not by something else, such as the recession. Feinberg's guidelines say key factors include a claimant's geographic proximity to the disaster and how much the business or property is linked to "injured natural resources."

They forgot to add: Who gets paid will depend on who you know and political connections. Watch, most of this money will quietly disappear into someones pocket. Not where it is supposed to go.

Do people realize how much money 20 billion dollars is?

----

Gulf coast residents wish to thank the Obama family for coming to visit for 23 hours and wish them happiness on their 10 day jaunt to Martha's Vineyard.

---

This whole oil disaster is causing my dogs to have insomnia. I'm calling my lawyer

---

Feinberg and Obama, working for you.

Unless you live in a Red State.......

[jasmine]

http://www.newser.com/story/98666/brad-pitt-suggests-death-penalty-for-oil-spill-execs.html

Brad Pitt Suggests Death Penalty for Oil Spill Execs

Yep, he'd consider it






(Newser) – Brad Pitt didn’t believe in the death penalty … until the BP oil spill. Now he says he is “willing to look at it again” when it comes to those responsible for the crisis. The remark is part of Spike Lee’s documentary, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, premiering tonight on HBO. The film, marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, is a follow-up to his 2006 When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.


Lee said the film was planned to be “much more upbeat,” but then the Gulf oil spill happened, the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1305215/Brad-Pitt-willing-look-death-penalty-bizarre-rant-BP.html#ixzz0xNCyytrf) reports. Pitt’s not the only one who’s angry: In an interview with GQ (http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201009/spike-lee-new-orleans-katrina-bp-oil-obama-da-creek-dont-rise), Lee says he doesn’t know “why Obama ever trusted these BP guys! They would lie to their mothers. Hayward does not give a ****. The thing we don't talk about is that eleven Americans lost their lives and it took seven weeks to invite their families to the White House. I'm not trying to bash my man, but that's a long time.”

[Jolie Rouge]

New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf
Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer – 1 hr 34 mins ago

WASHINGTON – A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress. "Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets. "Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea" cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.

Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent while within the plume it was 59-percent.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Sciencexpress is the online edition of the journal Science.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gulf_oil_eating_bugs;_ylt=AmNrM7sSZ.KEdlvm1 Zp6TWus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlZHRscXZyBHBvcwMxMTUEc2VjA 2FjY29yZGlvbl9zY2llbmNlBHNsawNuZXdtaWNyb2JlZGk-

Online: http://www.sciencexpress.org.


"The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP"


Goes to show you get what you pay for.


How convenient that just as one is needed an oil eating microbe that doesn't deplete the oxygen in the water is discovered. You can't believe this propaganda people.

There's another article about the discovery of thousands of dead fish near the mouth of the Mississippi River. That fish kill is not going to be attributed to the oil spill, but the oil spill is responsible for that fish kill. I don't believe any oil and or corexit will be found in or on those dead fish. But I believe the oil killed those fish by forcing them to flee into the Mississippi River in order to get away from the oil. And being salt water fish, they couldn't survive for a long period in the fresh water habitat of the Mississippi River.

I live near the Red River in Louisiana. The Red River flows into the Mississippi River. And about a month ago I caught a tarpon in the Red River about 200 miles from any salt water. Most fisherman know that tarpon are salt water fish. So my immediate thought was these fish are fleeing upstream to get away from the oil in the Gulf.

I did some research and found that tarpon can survive in fresh water, but they've only been found in fresh water river deltas near salt water. I couldn't find any reports of anyone ever catching a tarpon 200 miles away from any salt water.

Some fish species can survive in both fresh water and salt water habitats. Most salt water species can't survive in fresh water for a long period. Just as most fresh water species can't survive in a salt water for a long period.

I believe that fish kill is due to the oil in the Gulf, but they won't be found to be contaminated with oil or corexit. That isn't how the oil killed them. The oil killed those salt water fish by forcing them to flee into a fresh water habitat where they could not survive.

I hate to say it, because it's going to harm my state irreparably, but stay away from Gulf seafood. Too many lies are being told. Too many cover ups. Too many convenient discoveries of new microbes. You can't believe anyone when they tell you the fish and the water are fine.


Thousands of dead fish reported at mouth of Mississippi
Mon Aug 23, 7:33 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Thousands of fish have turned up dead at the mouth of Mississippi River, prompting authorities to check whether oil was the cause of mass death, local media reports said Monday.

The fish were found Sunday floating on the surface of the water and collected in booms that had been deployed to contain oil that leaked from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Times-Picayune reported. "By our estimates there were thousands, and I'm talking about 5,000 to 15,000 dead fish," St Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro was quoted as saying in a statement.

He said crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout and red fish were among the species that turned up dead.

Taffaro said there was some recoverable oil in the area, and officials from the state's wildlife and fisheries division were sampling the water.

But he added, "We don't want to jump to any conclusions because we've had some oxygen issues by the Bayou La Loutre Dam from time to time."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100823/ts_alt_afp/usenvironmentfish;_ylt=AirkBxZHVEZrW6.UkZuuRoSp_aF 4;_ylu=X3oDMTE1dGZlaDhuBHBvcwMxBHNlYwN5bi1jaGFubmV sBHNsawN0aG91c2FuZHNvZmQ-